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TITIAN 



THE TRIBUTE MONEY 

Dresden Gallery 


The History of Painting 

From the Fourth to the Early 
Nineteenth Century 


By 
Richard Muther, Ph.D. 

Professor in the University of Breslau. Author of " The History of 
Modern Painting," etc. 

Authorised English Edition 

Translated from the German and Edited with Annotations 

By 
George Kriehn, Ph.D. 

Sometime Instructor in the Johns Hopkins University and 
Assistant Professor in the Leland Stanford Jr. University 

In Two Volumes 
VOLUME I. 

Illustrated 


LONDON AND NEW YORK 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 


Copyright, 1907 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 


Published, March, 190; 
Reprinted - 1907 


Botolph 


Made and Printed tn Great Britain at the 

i Printinp Works, Gate Street, Kingsaay, IF.C.2 


t. . 4 - 


preface 


V. I 


THE author of the present work, now for the first 
time presented in EngHsh translation, needs no 
introduction to the English-speaking public. 
To all investigators and students of the history of art 
he is widely known as the author of numerous authorita- 
tive works upon the history of illustration and of paint- 
ing. Some of us, indeed, had the good fortune to hear 
his brilliant paper upon Prohlems oj the Study oj Modern 
Painting at the congress held in connection with the 
Universal Exposition at St. Louis in 1904. To the 
general public also, he is widely known by his standard 
treatise, Geschichte der Malerei im neun^ehnten Jahr- 
hundert (3 vols., Munich, 1893-4), the English trans- 
lation of which appeared under the title. The History 
oj Modern Painting, in 1895-6. This rather inaccu- 
rate translation of the German title of the work (since 
the term " Modern Painting " is usually employed 
to include the entire development since the Renais- 
sance) should not lead the reader to confuse it with 
the present work, the title of which I have translated 
The History oj Painting. 

Its original, the Geschichte der Malerei, appeared in 
five small volumes in the Sammlung Goschen (Leipzig, 


111 


20650 


f 


Copyright, 1907 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

Published, March, 1907 
Reprinted - 1907 


Made and Printed m Great Britain at the 
Botolpb Print irtp Works, Gate Street, Kingsnay, IF.C.z 


V. 1^ 


A\32g 


preface 


Co^p/-^ 


THE author of the present work, now for the first 
time presented in English translation, needs no 
introduction to the English-speaking public. 
To all investigators and students of the history of art 
he is widely known as the author of numerous authorita- 
tive works upon the history of illustration and of paint- 
ing. Some of us, indeed, had the good fortune to hear 
his brilliant paper upon Problems of the Study of Modern 
Painting at the congress held in connection with the 
Universal Exposition at St. Louis in 1904. To the 
general public also, he is widely known by his standard 
treatise, Geschichte der Malerei im neim^ehnten Jahr- 
hundert (3 vols., Munich, 1893-4), the English trans- 
lation of which appeared under the title. The History 
of Modern Painting, in 1895-6. This rather inaccu- 
rate translation of the German title of the work (since 
the term " Modern Painting " is usually employed 
to include the entire development since the Renais- 
sance) should not lead the reader to confuse it with 
the present work, the title of which 1 have translated 
The History of Painting. 

Its original, the Geschichte der Malerei, appeared in 
five small volumes in the Sammlung Goschen (Leipzig, 


in 


2065U 


iv pvetace 

1900). While the first named work is practically 
confined to the nineteenth century, of which it is the 
standard history, the latter treats the entire develop- 
ment of European painting from the downfall of the 
antique world to the early nineteenth century, ending 
therefore where the former begins. But although it 
is more general in treatment and less prolix in detail 
than the earlier work, it is equally brilliant in style 
and interesting in conception. For it represents the 
consistent application to this more extensive period 
of the author's interesting theory of the interpretation 
of the great styles of painting from the psychology of 
the age in which they originated. 

The scope and purpose of the present work are most 
clearly indicated in Professor Muther's brief and modest 
preface to the German edition: 

"These volumes [he says] do not constitute a text-book of the 
history of painting, Tlie author has undertaken to present neither 
the biographies of the authors nor descriptions of their pictures. For 
the reader who is interested in such personal and descriptive records 
the material will be found available in a number of authoritative 
works. In the present treatise the author has attempted to explain 
from the psychology (so to speak) of each period its dominant style 
and to interpret the works of art as 'human documents.' The pre- 
scribed brevity of the work has rendered it impossible to do more 
than touch upon certain of the questions and problems considered." 

The interpretation of the works of the great masters 
from the time and circumstances under which they 
arose is not a novelty in the history of art. It is of 
common occurrence in the history of literature, and 
in artists' biographies of the present day it is customary 


Ipretace v 

to devote one or more chapters to such interpretation. 
Some biographies, indeed, like Thode's admirable 
Leben Michelangelos, are written entirely from the 
psychological standpoint. But no one has heretofore 
gone as far as Professor Muther in the application of 
the psychological method to such extensive periods, nor 
has any one used the method as incisively as he. The 
great styles are for him the necessary outcome of the 
intellectual and religious tendencies of the age; as, 
for example, the religious art of such painters as 
Botticelli, Crivelli, Perugino, and Memling are part 
and parcel of the great religious reaction throughout 
Europe of which the chief spokesman was Savonarola. 
The religious paintings of Zurbaran and the portraits 
of Velasquez are for him the logical expression of the 
two dominant tendencies of the Spanish monarchy, 
Catholicism and absolutism. Proceeding with the same 
method from the age to the individual, he interprets 
the works of the artist as the expression of his psychical 
development, bringing the reader into more sym- 
pathetic relation with the artist than is possible by 
any other method. 

This is hardly the proper place for an exposition of 
the advantages of the psychological method or a 
comparison of it with others. Suffice it to say that, 
as applied by Professor Muther, it gives greater unity 
to the development of European painting in that it 
reveals new and interesting bonds of union between 
widely separated schools; that its use elucidates a 




vi preface 

number of doubtful points; that it discloses relations 
among individual artists not hitherto evident; and 
that it brings the reader into more sympathetic 
relation with the art of the great epochs as well as 
with the individual masters. So well, indeed, does 
the author's treatment assign the relative importance 
of epochs and individuals, and so well has he selected 
for detailed treatment the really significant facts and 
masters, relegating the lesser lights to a proper sub- 
ordinate position, that his work, although it forms a 
well organised and harmonious whole, generally 
assumes the character of a series of brilliant and 
critical essays. Such interpretations as the sections 
treating Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Dlirer, Rem- 
brandt, Watteau, and many others are highly valuable 
contributions to art criticism. 

It must not however be assumed, because the treat- 
ment is a psychological one, that the author fails to 
give an insight into the technical qualities of the great 
masters, even though this may be only incidental to the 
treatment. In this regard the present work fully sus- 
tains the reputation achieved by the author in his 
History of Modern Painting. 

The style is clear and intelligible, more resembling 
clever magazine writing than the ponderous, involved 
style frequently met with in German works of this 
character. It has been the effort of the translator to 
preserve as far as possible the flavour of the original, 
although this has often been difficult. 


{Preface vii 

In accordance with the popular character of the 
work, the author has refrained from the use of foot- 
notes. It did not seem within the province of the 
editor to change this plan, except in a few instances 
requiring elucidation to the English-speaking public. 
A few other footnotes have been added in such cases 
where an explanation seemed desirable; as where the 
author's view conflicts with the consensus of expert 
opinion, or in case of some seeming error of detail. 
Nor has the editor esteemed it his duty to express or 
comment upon the instances in which his own opinion 
differs from that of the author. 

In the index will be found in connection with the 
name of each artist whose work is considered the 
specification of the year of his birth and death, in so 
far as these are obtainable. The translator has adopted 
the form of the names used by Professor Muther in all 
cases in which they are permissible in English. 

In conclusion, the translator desires to express his 
sincere thanks to his friend, A. I. du Pont Coleman, 
Esq., whose valuable advice and assistance have been 
freely and readily given, and his obligation to the 
publishers, who have spared no expense to make the 
book attractive in form. The numerous half-tone 
illustrations which appear in it have been selected with 
a view of supplementing the narrative with a pictorial 
presentation of the history of painting. 

George Kriehn, 
New York, November, 1906. 




\ 


Contents 

BOOK I.— MEDI/EVAL PAINTING. 
Chapter I. — ^The Middle Age. 


PACE 


I. — ^The Mosaic Style .... 3 

II. — Panel Painting under the Influence of 

Mysticism . . . .11 

III.— ^The Foundation of the Epic Style by 

Giotto 20 

IV. — Fresco Painting in the Later Fourteenth 

Century ...... 30 

Chapter II.— The Aftergrowth of the Mediaeval 
Style in the Fifteenth Century. 

I._The Struggle of the Old with the New 

Spirit- 39 

II. — Byzantinism and Mysticism ... 43 

III.— The End of the Monumental Style . 54 

BOOK II.— THE RENAISSANCE. 

Chapter I.— Nature and Antique. 

I.— The First Realists 65 

ix 


Contents 


II. — Storm and Stress in Florence 
III. — Piero della Francesca . 
IV. — ^The Harbingers of the Storm 
V. — Mantegna .... 
VI. — ^The Successors of Mantegna . 
VII. — Hugo van der Goes 
VIII. — The Age of Lorenzo the Magnificent 


Chapter II. — ^The Religious Reaction 


I. 


-Savonarola . 
II. — Piero di Cosimo 
III.— Botticelli . 
IV. — F^ilippino Lippi 
V. — ^The Secular Relig 
VI.— Crivelli 
VII. — Perugino 
VIII. — Giovanni Bellini 
IX. — Memling 
X.— Leonardo . 


ous Masters 


PACK 
82 
96 

126 


162 

'73 
187 
195 
202 
207 
217 
229 
238 


Chapter III. — Germanic Painting during the Age 
OF THE Reformation. 


I. — ^The Beginnings of the Italian Influence 
II.— The Netherlands .... 
III. — ^The Cologne School 

IV.— Durer 

v.— Franconia and Bavaria . 


253 
260 

267 

278 

292 


Contents xi 


PAGE 


VI. — Alsace and Suabia .... 304 
VII. — Holbein ...... 312 

Chapter IV. — ^The Triumph of the Sensual in 

Italy. 

I. — ^The Influence ot Leonardo . . . 324 

II. — Leonardo's Followers .... 330 

III. — Giorgione ...... 339 

IV. — Correggio 345 

Chapter V. — ^The Majestic and the Titanic, 

I. — ^The Conception of Beauty in the Cinque- 


cento .... 

II.— Titian 

III. — The Contemporaries of Titian 
IV. — Michelangelo 
V. — ^The Triumph of the Formal . 


356 
363 
376 

383 
401 


i 


PAGE 


miustratlone 

Titian — The Tribute Money- Frontispiece 

Dresden Gallery 

Mosaic of 1220 (?)—CIirist EntJironed, 
Surrounded by Four Apostles . 6 

Apse of San Paolo fuori le Mura, Rome 

Duccio di Buoninsegna — Tlie Kiss 

of Judas . . . . 14 

Museo del Opera della Cattedrale, Siena 

Giotto di Bondone — Tlie Bewailing 

of St. Francis . . . . 22 

Fresco, Santa Croce, Florence 

Giotto di Bondone — Allegory of Envy 28 

Fresco in the Arena Chapel, Padua 

Unknown Master of tlie Later Tre- 
cento— Triunipli of DeatJi . . 36 

Campo Santo, Pisa 

Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, Called Fra 
A ngelico — Two Dom in ica ns 
Receiving CItrist . . . 52 

San Marco, Florence 

xiii 


Jfiv *ffUu9trations 


PAGE 


Mjsaccio — The Expulsion from 

Paradise 56 

Fresco in the Brancacci Chapel, S. M. del Car- 
mine, Florence 

Jan van Eyck — Giovanni Arnolfini 

and his Wife .... 70 

National Gallery, London 

Filippo Lippi—Coronation of the 

Virgin 94 

Accademia, Florence 

Piero delta Francesca — The Birth 

of Christ . . . . .102 

National Gallery, London 

Roger van der IVeyden — Bewailing 

of the Body of Clirist . . 108 

Berlin Gallery 

Andrea Mantegna — Parnassus . 124 

Louvre 

Luca Signorelli — The Last Judg- 
ment (Part) . . . -134 

Fresco, Cathedral of Orvieto 

Hugo van der Goes — Adoration of 

the Shepherds . . . . 138 

Uffizi Gallery, Florence 


•ffllustrations ^v 


PAGE 


Domenico Ghirlandjjo—Birth of 

the Virgin . • . . 152 

Fresco, Santa Maria Novella, Florence 

Piero di Cosimo — The Death of 

Procris 170 

National Gallery, London 

Sandro Botticelli— The Magnificat . 176 

Uffizi Gallery, Florence 

Sandro Botticelli — La Primavera . 1 80 

Accademia, Florence 

Carlo Crivelli — Madonna with 

Saints 204 

Berlin Gallery 

Pietro Perugino — The Crucifixion . 212 

Fresco, S. M. Maddalena dei Pazzi, Florence 

Giovanni Bellini — The Doge Bar- 
berigo Kneeling before the Ma- 
donna 218 

Accademia, Venice 

Hans Memling— The Madonna . 232 

Vienna Gallery 

Leonardo da Vinci— The Last Supper 246 

Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan 


xvi Illustrations 


PAGE 


Leonardo da Vinci-— Moiia Lisa . 2^2 

Louvre 

Hans Holbein the Elder — Martyr- 
dom of St. Sebastian . . . 256 

Munich Gallery 

Quentin Masses — 7^he Banker and 

his Wife ..... 260 

Louvre 

AlbrechtDiirer — Portrait of Himself 284 

Prado, Madrid 

Albrecht Diirer—Saints Paul and 

Mark 292 

Munich Gallery 

Hans Holbein the Younger - Por- 
trait of Georg Gisse . . . 314 

Berlin Gallery 

Hans Holbein the Younger — Arch- 
bishop IV a r ham of Canterbury . 320 

Louvre 

Ambrogio da Predis—Bianca Maria 

Sfor^a 330 

Ambrosiana Collection, Milan 




IFUustrations xvii 


PAGE 


Giorgioiie — The Sleeping Melius . 340 

Dresden Gallery 

Correggio — The Marriage of St. 

Catherine 350 

Louvre 

Correggio^The School of Cupid . 354 

National Gallery, Loudon 

Titian — Flora 364 

Uffizi Gallery, Florence 

Titian — The Man with the Glove . 370 

Louvre 

Giovanni Battista Morone -Por- 
trait of a Tailor . . . 382 

National Gallery, London 

Michelangelo— The Birth of Adam . 388 

Fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Rome 

Michelangelo— The Prophet Jeremiah 398 

Fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Rome 

Andrea del Sarto — The Madonna 

del Sacco 404 

Fresco in the Cloister of the Annunciata, Florence. 
VOL. I.— r 


flDcMaeval ipaintino 


# 


Cbapter II 

1.— ^be /Hbosafc St^le 

THE history of Christian painting may perhaps 
be conceived as a great compromise with 
Hellenism. With the collapse of the antique 
world, the most subtly refined civilisation that the 
world has ever seen came to an end. By its spiritual 
tendencies and its denial of the earthly, Christianity 
placed almost insuperable barriers to art. " Great 
Pan was dead." Religion with the Greeks had been 
a joyous cult of the senses teaching men to enjoy life 
here below; it now became a belief in the other world, 
which regarded the earthly existence as only a sad 
preparation for the life to come. True, the spring 
still came; men loved, the flowers bloomed, the birds 
sang, and the meadows were green. But all this was 
a delusion of Hell intended to lead the believer astray 
and to fill his soul with sinful thoughts. The world 
beyond was his home, the present world only a Gol- 
gotha, where the skull lay and Christ hung crucified. 

3 


4 Ube /IDtODlc Boe 

By this ascetic trend so hostile to sensuahty.^ which 
proscribed the love of nature and the enjoyment of 
this world, Christianity tied up the chief artery of 
artistic creation; and only in one direction was the 
course left open. 

" It had deepened the psychical, and revealed treasures of kindness 
and love, of humility and self-denial, which Greek thought had not 
yet conceived. In this direction, if any art at all should originate, 
the development must go. As Greek art had been sensual and 
physical, the Christian must become psychical and spiritual. If the 
former had sought its aim in the ideal perfection of bodily form, Chris- 
tianity must find hers in the apotheosis of the soul." * 

Although by a circuitous route, painting approached 
this aim. 

The first reaction against Hellenism was this, that 
art was entirely forbidden. " Cursed be all who 
paint pictures," is a sentiment often recurring in the 
writings of the church fathers. Not until Christianity 
had come- into contact with other cultures, after it 
had come to Rome, did it lose its hostile character 
to art. But as these artists were Romans it is at the 
same time explicable why the first works of art were 
much less Christian than antique. It is the affair of 
the theologian to describe how painting began as a 
language of signs, and to explain all those symbols, 
the cross, the fish, the lamb, the dove, and the phoenix, 

' The terms " sensual " and "sensuality " are used in this translation 
to signify that which appertains to the senses; without evil signifi- 
cance, and corresponding with the German sinnlich and SiiniHchkcit. 

  It was impossible for the translator to obtain from the author in 
time the source of this citation, evidently the same authority cited 
on pp.6, 46-47- 


Zbc /IDosaic St\?le s 

which, as a kind of hieroglyphic writing, open the history 
of Christian art. The archaeologist must explain 
why in the pictures of the catacombs, although they 
express a new spirit, the forms of the antique are used 
without reserve. All these mural paintings, Hermes 
Bearing the Ram, Orpheus Playing the Lute, or 
other figures borrowed from paganism, and now intro- 
duced with Christian change of meaning, are joyful 
and bright. As in the mural paintings of Pompeii, 
the entire treatment is decorative in a pleasant sense. 
But this correspondence shows that the art of the 
catacombs belongs to the past, not the future — 
that it is the end, not the beginning of an artistic 
development. 

Not until after the first churches were constructed, 
and Christianity represented no longer a sect but the 
ruling state religion, could a Christian art develop. 
The symbolic element, which had been borrowed from 
the antique, becomes less prominent, and the sacred 
personages of Christian art receive their fixed types. 
This development is reflected in the mosaics. Although 
they also were created by a technical process known 
to the ancient Romans, the spirit which pervades 
them is a new one. In these works the whole tre- 
mendous power of the church in the first days of its 
recognition is expressed. " As once in the temples 
of the Hellenic world the gold-gleaming statues of 
Zeus and Pallas had shone, so now from the apses of 
the basilicas the images of Jesus and of His court look 


6 Zbc /IDiC>Me Boe 

down in solemn splendour." A solemn repose char- 
acterises all these figures; motionless as statues, they 
are enthroned side by side in simple symmetry. The 
vine decoration and the playful, joyous elements of 
antique art which still prevailed in the paintings of the 
catacombs have disappeared. All is solemn, imposing, 
suffused with majestic splendour, like the heroes of 
the Christian faith, as if for eternity, and with a 
sublimity and power attained by no other technique. 

"The gigantic size of the figures, their immobility, and the threat- 
ening glance of their staring open eyes lias a superhuman terrifying 
effect. The whole spirit of the middle age, in its gloomy dogmatism 
and fanatic severity, and the unshaken sense of power of the ancient 
church have found form in these sublime works. 

" Only one thing is no longer felt: that Christianity was originally 
the religion of love. In course of the centuries Christian doctrine had 
taken an increasingly dogmatic form. The loving founder of the new 
faith, the simple Jesus of Nazareth, had by the decree of the councils 
been transformed into a God; and God Himself, the loving Father, had 
become a punishing despot. So, at least, the mosaics announce. 
They speak of the power and of the severity of God, not of His kind- 
ness; they preach the fear of God, but no heavenly love." 

That they are made of stone is significant; for stony, 
cold, and icy is the heart of these beings. All-know- 
ing, all-seeing, and unapproachable, divinity, like an 
omnipresent revenging Nemesis or a stony Gorgon, 
looks down upon the world. 

The gloomy, rigid, and motionless character of the 
mosaic style was justified as long as Byzantine painting 
was confined to Byzantium; for here it corresponded 
with the development followed by Christian belief. 



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Ubc /IDosaic St\?le 7 

It suited to the formal character of the state, the 
solemn ceremony of manners, the rigid gravity of the 
court, and the strangely stable, oriental spirit per- 
vading all life. But the youthful, unexhausted 
nations of the West, who from the close of the first 
millennium had entered as new factors into history, 
also required ideals. Whence should they be derived? 
Although the Occident too had long been nourished 
from the mighty heritage of antiquity, the incursions 
of the northern barbarians put an end to this ancient 
civilisation. After the events of the German mi- 
grations and during the resulting struggles, there was 
for centuries no room for art, which can only flourish 
in the soil of a clarified culture. The new races began 
indeed to govern themselves and to form real nations; 
but with all their military greatness, energy and force, 
they had not yet entered that aesthetic stage which is a 
prerequisite of artistic development. Men were en- 
gaged in eating and drinking, building, tilling the 
soil, and populating the country: it was only a time 
for armi, not for marmi. Not until the material 
wants had been supplied did enterprising Byzantines 
cross over to adorn the new churches with their works 
of art. Through them the Occident received its first 
artistic veneer; but the schematism of that withered 
art was also transferred to the new domain. Confined 
between the civilisation of the declining Orient and 
the barbarism of their home, artists hesitated between 
blind imitations of Byzantine models and awkward, 


8 Zbc /lDi&Mc Bac 

crude, and helpless creation from their own feelings. 
In the one case a rigid scheme prevails, in the other 
barbaric wildness. 

The miniature painting of the Irish, Gallic, and 
German monks was less painting than calligraphy. 
From scrolls and flourishes purely calligraphic human 
figures were constructed. Panel-painting occasionally 
attempted to break through Byzantine rigidity: the 
artists painted gigantic crucifixes and even ventured 
upon more dramatic subjects, such as martyrdoms 
and passion scenes. But every effort was thwarted 
by their inability to draw. The limbs are uncouth, 
the movements clumsy, and the pictures unnatural, 
crude, and hideous. In other instances foreign models 
were imitated, only with greater crudity and rudeness. 
It seems as if the painters had intentionally imitated 
the aged character of their Byzantine models. Morose 
and emaciated figures, withered as mummies, with 
hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes — beings grown old 
through castigation and penance, — are the subjects of 
the later products of mosaic-painting. And even these, 
instead of becoming more lifelike, constantly grew 
more rigid and gloomy. As mosaics played the deter- 
minative role in art, mural and glass painting acquired 
the same ascetic, petrified style. Not an eyelash of 
these figures quivers; not a feature betrays that they 
could hear prayers of men, graciously comfort or 
mercifully pardon them. Severe as judges, and with 
pitiless dignity, they stare down like threatening 


Ube /iDosaic Stifle 9 

tables of the law, demandrng submission, fear, and 
obedience, but according neither mercy, comfort, nor 
redemption. 

And yet men long for love and comfort. When 
the official forms of religion had hardened into spirit- 
less rigidity, they again sought to enter into a personal 
relation with God, and to honour Him not as a slave 
his master, but as a child his father. They desired 
saints who should not make the sinner tremble by 
their heartless severity, but who should kindly and 
lovingly pity him. In the great religious movement 
accomplished in the twelfth century, this longing 
found expression. Amidst the great world-moving 
questions of Catholicism the care for the individual 
had been forgotten. The exciting age of the crusades 
had concealed for a time the interior emptiness; but 
after the jubilation of war had passed over, it was all 
the more perceptible. The people required clergy 
who should take part in their pain and joy; who should 
preach no longer in Latin but in the vernacular, and 
proclaim the gospel, not with scholastic subtlety, but 
with the same patriarchal simplicity as did Christ 
upon the Mount of Olives. Peter Waldo had already 
appeared, but the church had condemned him as a 
heretic. Francis of Assisi was the first to have a 
better fate. 

When he began his sermons a feeling of springtime 
passed over the earth. It seemed to men as if a new 
Messiah had come; and Francis indeed refounded 


10 Z\K /IDi^Me Boe 

Christianity by the substitution of a rehgion of feeling 
for a rigid faith in the letter. Love bridged the abyss 
which had until now yawned so abruptly between God 
and mankind. By depriving the Godhead of its awful 
rigidity, mysticism gave it a feeling, human soul. 
Mary especially, the youthful mother of God, became 
the centre of worship. The adoration of Mary re- 
flected in part the knightly reverence for women felt 
by the Crusaders and the Minnesingers; but it is due 
also to her personality, which, in its tender, helpless 
womanhood, was more sympathetic to the sentiment 
of the age than the tragic figure of the Son of God and 
the severe majesty of the Father. To her St. Francis 
dedicated stammering love songs, just as the Minne- 
singers had written to their gentle ladies, their " liebe 
Frouwe." In her honour the chimes of Ave Maria each 
evening sounded their salutation from the towers of all 
Franciscan churches. 

Not only did Francis bring divinity nearer to man- 
kind; he also reconciled it with the animal world and 
with nature. As in the days of Hellas a pantheistic 
trend again passed over the earth. While the middle 
age had seen in animals only beings inimical to God, 
creations of Satan, and enchanted demons, Francis 
calls them his "brothers and sisters." And the 
animals thank him for his love; the robins eat at his 
table, and the birds of the field listen to his sermon. In 
like manner he freed nature from the curse which 
monkish theology had spoken over her. He calls 


panel*lPaintino n 

upon the meadows and the vineyards, the fields and 
the woods, the rivers and the hills to praise God. For 
him all creation is the result of the love of God, who 
wishes to see men happy; who lets the spring come 
and the mild winds blow in order that his children 
here below may rejoice in them. 

These changed views did not remain without in- 
fluence upon art. Through Francis nature was 
reconciled to religion, and again became a subject of 
artistic glorification. Therefore, in place of the gold 
background which had previously served the purpose 
of isolating the figures of the saints from everything 
earthly, the landscape gradually appears: rose hedges 
and paradisiac gardens, where the little birds sing and 
animals live peaceably beside the saints. But especially 
from a psychic point is the change perceptible. As in 
the midst of the religious enthusiasm the fervent 
hymns of the Franciscans replaced older chants, so in 
painting ecstatic feeling succeeds rigid solemnity. 
The saints, once so gloomy and severe, became kindly 
and mild as the Poverello himself. Especially in de- 
picting Mary and the lovely virgins of her train, art 
learned what it most lacked: the expression of psychic 
feeling. 

nil. ipanelsipatnting unDer tbe irnfluence of /DiBSticism 

But the circumstance that panel-painting, which 
formerly had played a very modest part, now became 


12 XTbe ^iMDMe Bee 

the determinative factor in art is characteristic of the 
change in emotional hfe. In mosaic-painting also 
artistic progress and animation of the figures was ex- 
cluded by the technique of the work. The painter 
could not express himself directly, since he only de- 
signed the cartoon which served as a model for the 
artisans who completed the work. Now the place 
of this impersonal style, in whose cold material every 
emotion was chilled, was taken by a new technique 
which permitted the master to record his thoughts 
without an intermediary, and also to express by means 
of the delicate technique of the brush the finer shades 
of emotion. 

Nevertheless, the change was in no sense a rapid 
one. However much art endeavoured to follow the 
new spirit of the times, it stood under the ban of a 
thousand years' tradition. Even after the appearance 
of Francis the Byzantine scheme prevailed, and very 
gradually the new sentiment breaks through tra- 
ditional forms. 

In older art Mary had usually been represented alone 
with arms raised in prayer. More rarely the theme 
was the Madonna with the Christ-child, although, 
according to the legend, the evangelist Luke had 
painted such a picture. But even then Mary pre- 
served her rigid sublimity. She is seated facing the 
beholder — the involuntary mother of God; while He, 
more a miniature divinity than a child, stands solemnly 
upon her lap, holding in one hand a scroll, as a sign 


panel^lPainttno 13 

of His office as teacher, and with the other giving 
the blessing. 

The oldest panel paintings differ in no wise from 
these mosaics. Until the twelfth century it had been 
the custom to adorn the altars with costly reliquaries 
wrought in metal; and partly to preserve the metallic 
sheen of this decoration, partly because of the con- 
tiguity of mosaics or stained glasses, the paintings 
had to make the most glittering impression possible. 
The figures, therefore, are raised like mosaics from a 
gold background. Red, blue, and gold are the pre- 
vailing colours. The figures also have the solemnity 
of Byzantine types. The head of the Madonna, with 
the large almond eyes and long, pointed nose, and the 
indifferent manner in which she holds the Child with 
her elongated, bony hands, are the same in both cases; 
as is also true of the aged features of the Byzantine 
Christ-child. There is as yet no sign of any in- 
novation or of heightened emotion. 

Not until the close of the thirteenth century, in the 
works of the Florentine master Cimabue, is a change 
perceptible. The Christ-child becomes more childish 
and tender; and a soft inclination of the head of the 
Madonna shows that she hears the prayers of men and 
can bring them help and gracious forgiveness. The 
hard, sullen features are animated by softness and 
charm, by human sentiment; and it is in this sense 
that Vasari wrote that through Cimabue more love 
had come into art. 


14 Xlbe nDit)Dle Uqc 

More tenderly than the rest of Tuscany, Siena, the 
quiet hill city, incorporated the mystic ideal of the 
Madonna. The Siennese are the first lyric painters 
of modern art. As they imparted to their pictures 
a neat and dainty element and a splendour of colour 
and gilding that recall Byzantine art, so also their 
works reflect the wealth of ecstatic feeling that had 
come into the world through St. Francis. While 
Byzantine art emphasised age, here the youthful, 
lovely, and graceful prevail; if there all was stormy 
and rigid, the prevailing characteristic here is slender, 
supple grace. It seems as if the stone vaults of the 
churches had suddenly become transparent, and the 
eye gazed upward into the real heaven, where tender 
ethereal beings, singing and praising the Highest, 
lived in eternal youth and lovingly gazed down upon 
mankind. In his great Madonna of the Cathedral 
Duccio gave the first impulse. This Mary is no longer 
severe and dignified, but mild and gracious, as if she 
had had pity upon the longing soul of the believer; 
for a soft dreamy melancholy transfigures her features. 
Her relation to the Child also is changed; she is no 
longer the involuntary mother of God, but a tender 
mother. Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the gentle poet, 
painted her tenderly pressing her cheek against the 
Child's face, and giving nourishment to Him: motherly 
and yet maidenly, proud and yet modest. 

A similar progress from rigidity to soul-painting 
may be seen in all subjects. Not only in the principal 



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5 « 

in "Q. 

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lpaneU|S>aintin0 15 

figures; for in order to Heighten the psychic effect 
painters loved to add angels and saints, whose joy or 
sadness harmoniously echoed the sentiment of the 
principal event. Formerly the Assumption of Mary 
was depicted with frosty rigidity; now gratitude and 
heavenly longing beam from her eyes, while the angels 
sing and make music, and festal jubilation pervades 
the pictures. In the Coronatioyi of Mary nothing 
else had been formerly represented but Christ, stiffly 
seated, placing a crown upon the head of the equally 
immobile Madonna. Now she crosses her arms in 
humble ecstasy, and the Redeemer blesses her. while 
saints and angel musicians follow the action in joyful 
astonishment. If the Annunciation is depicted, the 
endeavour now is to express the modesty of Mary 
and the childish eagerness of God's messenger. Even 
to the crucifixes, which were formerly frightful pictures, 
in awkward blurred outlines, with an uncouth, greenish 
body, a sacred and melancholy sentiment is imparted. 
Silent devotion speaks from the eyes of the Redeemer 
wailing or lost in the depths of melancholy his friends 
stand about: one pressing his hands upon his breast, 
another lifting them in astonished adoration, a third 
covering his face and weeping hot tears. 

The same development was experienced during the 
fourteenth century in Germany; indeed, the ideals 
of the mystics perhaps found here their purest embodi- 
ment, since a dreamy sentimentality is more a part of 
the German than of the Italian character. 


VOL. I. — 2 


i6 Zbc /!l^i^^lc Boe 

In Germany also, especially in Westphalia, it had 
been preceded by altar-pieces in the rigid style of 
mosaics. The position is stiff, the expression lifeless, 
and the forms are outlined with severe conventionality. 
Eyes, noses, beards, the folds of the garments, and the 
wings of the angels, everything — although drawn with 
a brush, makes rather the impression of being composed 
of mosaic cubes. 

The schools of Prague and Nuremberg likewise made 
little progress beyond this. In Prague, which had 
become an artistic centre through Charles IV, the 
chief painter was Master Theodorich, who carried 
specifically mediaeval painting to the highest perfection. 
All of his figures are of gloomy majesty and deep 
solemnity: the heads powerful, the eyes threatening, 
and the draperies arranged in accordance with the 
mosaic style. The painters of Nuremberg, indeed, 
attempted to follow the new spirit of the times; for 
their works, although commonplace and compre- 
hensible, are softer than those of Prague. The solemn 
grandeur of the mediaeval style is lost upon them; 
but to the ideals of the self-sacrificing love of God, 
which St. Francis had revealed, the artist of that 
thrifty commercial city could not honestly surrender. 
As Assisi of Italian, so Cologne became the centre 
of German painting. It was in a peculiar sense a 
sacred city, hallowed by the poetry of an ancient history 
and the seat of the mightiest cathedral of the middle 
age. During the fourteenth century, it was the home 


panel^paiutitiG 17 

of the greatest German mystics, Albertus Magnus, 
Master Eckhardt, Tauler of Strasburg, and Suso — all 
apostles of the same doctrine which Francis had pro- 
claimed in Italy. In Suso, especially, the seraphic 
saint found a successor kindred in spirit. His whole 
life was an eternal love struggle, his adoration of the 
Madonna of an almost sensual character. He calls her 
his heart's love, and begs that she will become his 
lady, because his young and gentle heart cannot exist 
without love. At night he longs for her and he salutes 
her in the morning. In the month of May, when the 
youths sing songs to their sweethearts, he also brings 
his song to the blessed one. He sees her before him 
in body, clothed in a long white garment, a wreath of 
roses in her golden hair; and hears songs like the sound 
of seolian harps. Just such visions, translated into 
painting, are the pictures of the epoch: the delicate 
ethereal dreams of pious visionary enthusiasts. As 
Mary had before been a solemn and majestic queen, 
she now appears as a most gracious virgin in all the 
charm of youth, attended like a princess by a court 
of well-bred maids of honour. 

The founder of this new tendency was until recently 
supposed to have been Master Wilhelm of Cologne. 
But it is evident from dated panels of the school that 
in the years 1358-72, when Wilhelm of Herle laboured 
at Cologne, the school of that city still moved in 
thoroughly mediaeval paths. The rigidly-drawn figures 
with angular movements and awkward hands in no 


,8 Ubc /HMbblc Hoe 

wise resemble the languishing beings with soft and 
oscillating bearing, so typical of the Cologne school. 
The actual creator of this new style was Hermann 
Wynrich of Wesel, who after Wilhelm of Herle's death 
took charge of his workshop, and dominated Cologne 
painting from 1390 to 1413. He, and not Master 
Wilhelm, is the master of the celebrated Altar of Mary 
in the Cathedral, which reveals with especial clearness 
the awakening of the new sentiment. 

The paintings are not all by the same hand. The 
crude passion scenes of the upper row seem the work 
of an assistant, who painted in the old style. Wynrich 
painted the six middle panels in which, with delicate 
freshness, the childhood of Jesus is recounted. When 
at a later period he attempted dramatic subjects, 
he had little success. Only where the problem is to 
dep'ct quiet Madonnas and mild womanhood his 
delicate lyric art is in place. The slender, fragile 
bodies of his Virgins, encircled by flowing garments, 
are quite overshadowed by the expression of their 
soft brown eyes, beaming with longing for the other 
world and for the heavenly bridegroom. The heads 
are inclined softly to the side; the shoulders are narrow 
and the chest is flat; and the weak, slender arms 
terminate in delicate, ethereally white hands. Even | 
the men, although they wear beards, possess nothing | 
of powerful manhood. They look bashfully and j 
humbly into the world, dreamy as children, reminding ' 
one of the doctrine of the mystics that a healthy body 


panel^lpainting 19 

is the severest hindrance in the journey to blessedness. 
One also recognises that from this subordination of 
body to soul all the excellences of this art are derived. 
Just because Wynrich placed the bodily element in 
the background, he succeeded in rendering the ex- 
pression of feeling with such purity and clearness. 
" The typical resemblance of the figures, the delicate 
oval of the heads, the fragile slenderness of the bodies — 
all serve to transport into a distant world, where 
everything is charming and beautiful, and the feelings 
are tender and refined: a paradise where neither 
rudeness nor discord disturbs the great harmony, the 
heavenly music of the spheres." 

•■' That the landscape is occasionally called into re- 
quisition in order to heighten the paradisiac sentiment 
of the pictures, is also due to the teachings of the 
mystics. As Francis in Italy, so Suso in Germany 
freed nature from the curse of monkish theology. 
Flowers, especially roses, and beautiful gardens in 
which the Madonna wanders, frequently occur in his 
visions." 

He describes Paradise as a beautiful meadow, where 
lilies and roses, violets and mayflowers exhale their 
odours, and where starlings and nightingales sing day 
and night their glorious melodies. Therefore Wynrich 
also loves to represent the Madonna out-of-doors, upon 
blooming meadows, escorted by dainty virgins. Some- 
times St. Catherine kneels beside her in the act of 
betrothal v/ith the Christ-child; sometimes it is Agnes 


20 Xlbe /llMt)Me Bge 

who plays with the lamb. Others read to her from 
precious books, make music, pluck flowers, or teach 
the Christ-child to play the zither. Knights, also, 
slender as maidens, join them to carry on well-bred 
conversation with the young ladies upon the green 
sward, where the flowers bloom and waft their per- 
fume. In works of this kind the medieval period of 
German art ended. They are the last echo from that 
world of pure harmonies which Francis and Suso had 
revealed. 

1I1I1I. Sbe 3founOat(on of tbe Epic Stgle bg ©fotto 

In another direction the appearance of St. Francis 
was even more fruitful in consequences. Not only did 
he deepen by his sermons the religious life of the period, 
thus creating the soil for mystic painting; but by re- 
placing the dogmatic by a personal Christ, as His 
earthly life had shown Him, a man among other men, 
he added the " Life of Christ " as a new subject of art. 
An epic was furnished which could be related only by 
painters. Especially did the life of the saint, with its 
self-denial and miraculous occurrences, call for present- 
ation with epic breadth in great monumental paintings. 

As the Gothic in Italy was different from that in the 
North, there was no lack of mural surfaces. Its 
principle was to vault wide interiors with great arches 
upon small supports; and as these broad surfaces 
required decoration, fresco painting became the de- 
terminative factor in Italian art. 


(Blotto 21 

For the legend of St. Francis there was no sacred 
tradition. The artists, confined for centuries to de- 
votional pictures of Christ and Mary in which every 
motion, every fold of the garment had been determined 
by ecclesiastical prescription, suddenly found freedom 
in this new theme. All the scenes had to be created 
anew from the oral traditions of the monks or from his 
Life by Bonaventura. The problem now was to 
depict events and actions, instead of quiet devotional 
paintings. For the mastery of such things emotional 
ecstasy and mystic meditation would not suffice. 
A mighty, virile formative power, a power to create 
independently, and a certain realism were necessary. 
The substitution of an actual, almost a contemporary, 
subject for immutable heavenly figures meant a com- 
plete break with mediaeval tradition. It is therefore 
no accident that the solution of this problem was ac- 
complished by a city which had no tradition to break, 
because it had stood silently aside during the middle 
age; not by eternal Rome, proud Venice, or mighty 
Pisa, but by youthful Florence, which, fresh, strong, 
and with unexhausted power, now took its place in the 
culture and art of Italy. By the side of the lyric 
artists of Siena and Cologne, the great Giotto arose 
as the epic painter; a realist among the mystics of 
the fourteenth century. 

He won his spurs in the church which was the 
burial-place of St. Francis at Assisi. Giovanni Cimabue, 
who had been commissioned with the decoration. 


22 Ube /lDi^t)le Hoe 

had taken him, the former shepherd boy, alon^ with 
his other assistants, and assigned to him, for inde- 
pendent execution, the pictures which adorned the 
walls of the upper church with scenes from the life of St. 
Francis. Having exercised his powers upon the new 
theme, and freed himself through this contemporary 
subject from the chains of Byzantinism, he saw also 
the ancient with the modern eye. The Legend of 
St. Francis was followed by a new version of the Lije 
of Christ, which he painted in the Church of the Arena 
at Padua. After he had decorated the nether church of 
Assisi with frescoes of the three vows of the Franciscan 
order, Poverty, Obedience, and Chastity, as well as the 
Apotheosis of St. Francis, and had created exten- 
sive but not longer existing works in various other 
cities (Rome, Ravenna, Rimini, and Naples), he re- 
turned in 1334 to Florence. He was made chief 
architect of the cathedral and of the campanile, and 
also began an extensive activity as a painter in Santa 
Croce, the church of the Franciscans, which had just 
been completed. Three years after his return, on the 
8th of January, 1337, his death occurred. Of him 
Boccaccio wrote in the Decamerone: "Giotto was such 
a genius that there was nothing in nature which he 
could not have represented in such a manner that it 
not only resembled, but seemed to be, the thing itself." 
And Poliziano wrote as his epitaph: 

"Ille ego sum, per quem natura extincta revixit." 
Such praise offered to Giotto as a naturalist seems 


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6fOttO 23 

much exaggerated to the modern mind. For whoever 
approaches Giotto's works with a realistic standard 
derived from the style of later epochs, finds no entry 
into the workshop of his spirit. 

True, when the problem is to depict something 
unusual or exotic he astonishes by a quite modern 
naturalism. Among the following of the Three Kings 
in the church of Assisi are strange examples of the 
Mongolian race, with flat noses, yellow skin, and ebony 
hair; and in like manner the heads of the Nubians in 
the Church of Santa Croce are astonishing in ethno- 
graphical fidelity. But that they thus impress us 
shows how isolated such things are in Giotto's works. 
Like all earlier artists" he also has a prevailing type: 
those hard, impersonal faces, as if sculptured in wood, 
with protruding cheek-bones, almond-shaped eyes, and 
straight, Grecian nose. 

The time was not yet ripe for the study of the nude. 
Consequently, where unclothed figures were depicted, 
as in the Baptism of Christ or in the pictures of the 
Crucifixion, the drawing is quite general. 

As to costume he has in isolated cases, as in his 
picture of the Adoration of the Kings, used con- 
temporary fashions; but only in case of figures which 
he wished to contrast with those belonging to specifically 
Christian mythology. For the saints he retains the 
solemn ideal costume which the middle age had adopted 
from the antique: the toga, tunic, and sandals, with 
the head uncovered. 


24 tlbe /iiMDMe Boe 

As in the representation of man, so as a painter of 
animals he is far distant from truth to nature. The 
pointer which in one of the Paduan frescoes springs 
upon St. Joachim, the mule which in the same series 
St. Joseph rides, and the three camels in the Ado- 
ration of the Kings at Assisi are, as regards natural- 
istic execution, probably the most important that 
Giotto has accomplished in the domain of animal 
painting. The sheep, with which as a former shepherd 
boy he must have been familiar, are incorrectly drawn; 
and the horse remains for him an incomprehensible 
mechanism. 

Even more singular are his backgrounds. The 
buildings, although true to nature, do not as a whole 
form a realistic background. Far too small, they are 
neither drawn in correct perspective nor in proper 
relation to the figures of men, who are often larger 
than the house in which they live. As a landscape 
painter he also moves along the most primitive lines. 
In his frescoes nature is usually composed of strangely 
jagged and bare cliffs, upon which here and there a 
tree grows, having as its only foliage at most a dozen 
leaves which look as if they were made of lead. The 
picturesque elements of the landscape — streams, val- 
leys, hills, and woods, — its sombre and light vegetation, 
existed as little for him as for other painters of the 
trecento. "If thou wishest to design mountains in 
correct fashion, so that they shall appear natural, choose 
great stones, rough and unpolished, and draw them 


6iotto 25 

after nature." This prescription of Cennini's is a 
significant document for the conception of nature 
during an epoch for which the tree signified the forest 
and the stone the mountain. 

Even the colour of Giotto, however much it may differ 
in its Hght tones from the elaborate and barbaric 
colour of Byzantine art, is far from corresponding with 
reality. As he sometimes paints horses red and trees 
blue, so he has never attained nor even attempted to 
render the difference of the substances of which things 
are composed, or to differentiate the treatment of 
architecture, drapery, or flesh. 

But in forming a conclusion as regards the im- 
portance of an artist, he should be compared never 
with later but with earlier artists. From this point 
of view even the extension of the subject-matter of 
painting accomplished by Giotto is most important. 
Whereas Byzantine art had only represented the 
regular, eternally fixed repose of the divine, and had 
only attempted to represent dramatic scenes in an 
incidental and modest fashion, Giotto was the first to 
depict action, and to represent not the quiet but the 
dramatic; not that which transcended time but what 
had actually happened. By substituting complete epics 
and dramas for representative devotional paintings, 
he became the first historical painter in Christian art. 

Continuing the comparison with work that preceded 
his, one is immediately impressed by the aggregate 
technical means of expression which Giotto had to 


26 Ube /n^t^Me Boe 

create in order to found this new style. Thie figures 
are not naturalistic in detail, but he is the first to present 
human figures in complete action. The animals are 
not well drawn, but he was the first to introduce into 
fresco painting the representatives of the animal 
kingdom, from the quadrupeds to the birds listening 
lo the sermon of St. Francis. Although his landscapes 
are still symbolic, it was a great step to transfer the 
figures from the Byzantine void into fixed earthly 
surroundings, and to depict them upon the earth, 
both in the country and in the streets and squares of 
the cities, in a new lifelike activity. 

Finally, much that seems to offend against natural 
truth should be explained not so much from lack of 
ability as from the requirements of a great style. In 
the absolute certainty with which he fixed the lav/s 
of the monumental style, his real immortal greatness 
lies. Giotto still knew, what later painters forgot, 
that it is not at all the purpose of mural painting to 
achieve naturalistic effects in form and colour; but that 
it only fulfils its purpose when it remains within the 
bounds of pure surface decoration. For this reason 
his art, even in our own day, has become the starting- 
point for Puvis de Chavannes and others. After the 
development which had for centuries been directed 
towards realism had at length concluded, it was all 
the more evident that Giotto had six centuries before 
possessed that which we are to-day trying to attain. 
His whole activity was determined not by the natural- 


i\ 


6fOttO 27 

istic but by the decorative point of view; and just 
because he sacrificed much of natural truth which he 
also might have attained, in order to achieve a monu- 
mental effect, he achieved in its very essence the pur- 
pose of decorative art. 

His secret lies in the great flow of line, the clear 
arrangements of groups, and the severe subordination 
of all detail. That no belittHng detail might disturb 
the flow of line, he chooses types which are simple and 
measured in feature and form. In order that the clear- 
ness of presentation might not suffer, he avoids all ac- 
cessory figures, confining himself to a laconic expression 
of the spiritual content of his theme. As the sustained 
grandeur of the monumental style is not reconcilable 
with abrupt change and uncertain gestures, he forms 
for himself a fixed language of gestures, which, like 
the written language, always uses the same words 
for the same things, and thus immediately relates to 
the observer what the figures have to say. A sig- 
nificant glance, a light movement of the hand and of 
the body, which the loosely hanging garments freely 
follow, suffice to express the person represented and 
the emotions of his soul. As he considers mural 
painting simply as surface decoration, he avoids all 
plastic effects depending upon illusion of corporeality, 
and labours in the same style as the Japanese, in whose 
works also the figures have neither roundness nor 
throw shadows. The colour also is subordinated to 
the decorative purpose; for which reason he has no 


28 Zbc /IIMbMc Hae 

scruples against a conscious deviation from reality, 
if a natural colour would have disturbed the gobelin 
tone of his paintings. 

Another consequence was the adaptation of the 
landscape to the requirements of this style. As the 
landscape could not be an independent factor, but only 
an accompaniment to the simple lines of the figures, 
he confined it to the simplest forms. Giotto also 
knew that no human beings could live in such little 
houses, that trees and plants could not grow so sym- 
metrically, and that cliffs were not formed like steps 
or pointed like needles; but he paints them so because 
he knew that a naturalistic presentation would have 
deviated from his aim. For if he had depicted the 
houses larger, his frescoes, instead of being monu- 
mental paintings, would have become architectural 
and historical genre-pieces in the style of Gentile 
Bellini. Had he not drawn his cliffs in such sharp, 
straight outlines, he would not have been able to 
separate the planes so sharply, or the different events 
so clearly from each other. Had he painted the 
trees in naturalistic fashion, they would not only have 
been out of harmony with the measured straight-lined 
figures, but the impression of solemnity achieved by 
his style would have been lost. Only by doing away 
with everything trivial and all naturalistic detail, 
and by simplifying nature in order that she might 
speak more clearly, could he give his works the firm 
precision and the solemn dignity demanded by the 


GIOTTO DI BONDONE 



ALLEGORY OF ENVY 

Fresco hi the Arena Chapel, Padua 


r 


(Biotto 29 

theme as well as by the style of decorative art. 

The founder of this style could only be a man of 
such a clear and virile mind as Giotto. It is a psycho- 
logical curiosity that in the midst of such an ecstatic 
generation a man should live with nothing of the 
mystic about him. In order to recognise this trend 
of his character one has only to examine his Madonnas. 
They are far separated from the tenderness and the 
mystic sincerity of the Siennese and Cologne artists. 
A certain sobriety, ungraceful severity, and prosaic 
objectivity clings to them. Instead of attempting, 
Hke the others, to attain ethereal blessedness, he 
introduces realistic and genre features. The Christ- 
child sticks his finger in his mouth, plays with a bird, 
or is on the point of climbing into his mother's lap. 
The few anecdotes known from his life also point to 
the same double position. While glorifying the vows 
of the Franciscans, he was very careful that poverty 
should not be the chief aim of his own effort. Although 
a painter, he was equally successful in the most ma- 
terial of arts, one postulating no sentiment but only 
technical ability and mathematical calculation — ar- 
chitecture. He, indeed, painted mystic subjects, but 
was known among his contemporaries as a very clear- 
headed man, whose modern views and caustic witti- 
cisms contrasted strangely with the character of the 
saint, whose glorification it was his mission to celebrate. 

Such also is the character of his art. It reveals, 
like the works of the Siennese, what depths of psychic 


30 Ube /llM^Me Hoe 

life were revealed by St. Francis. All the emotions 
of the human heart — anger and humility, love and hate, 
courage and self-denial — are interpreted in masterly 
fashion; but without mystic blessedness and with 
sensible objectivity. His art is cold and transparent 
and speaks in sentences as brief and convincing as 
the conclusions of a mathematical theorem. No 
enthusiast, but a man of positive, exact mind; no 
dreamer, but a powerful workman of healthy, com- 
prehensive vitality, he determined for a century to 
come the development of Italian art. 

HID. 3Fre6CO*iPainting In tbe Xatec jfourteentb Gentuvs 

After Giotto had created a language for painting, 
an extensive activity began throughout Italy. In 
Florence, the Church of Santa Croce, where he had 
painted his last pictures, offered a rich field of work 
for the younger generation, and at the same time Santa 
Maria Novella received its decoration. Siena, not- 
withstanding its lyric and mystic tendencies, also fol- 
lowed the spirit of the age, which had now become 
epic, in causing its Palazzo Pubblico to be decorated 
with frescoes. In Pisa, the slumbering city of de- 
cayed grandeur, the Camposanto received one of the 
most powerful cycles of frescoes in mediaeval art. In 
Padua, where Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel had 
awakened a sense for monumental art, native artists 
proved their power in the Church of Sant' Antonio 
and in the Chapel of San Giorgio. 


J 


Xater jfresco^ipamtino 31 

The names of the principal artists are: in Florence, 
Taddeo Gaddi, Giottino, Maso di Banco, Giovanni da 
Milano, Andrea Orcagna, Agnolo Gaddi, Antonio 
Veneziano, Francesco da Volterra, and Spinello Aretino; 
in Siena, Simone Martino, Lippo Memmi, Pietro and 
Ambrogio Lorenzetti; and in Padua, Altichiero da 
Zevio and Jacopo d' Avanzo. Pisa, though once the 
chief seat of plastic art, produced no native painters, 
with the single exception of Francesco Traini, but 
imported foreign talent for the accomplishment of 
its great commissions. 

After Giotto had portrayed the life of Christ and the 
legends of St. Francis and St. John the next step was 
to treat in a similar manner the entire Bible and the 
legends of the saints. The events of the Old and of 
the New Testament and the narrative of the Legenda 
Aurea were depicted in the same lucid style in which 
the sermons of St. Francis had been delivered. 

Then the order of the Dominicans entered as a 
mighty factor into the artistic life. The Franciscans, 
simple men of the people, were now joined by the 
learned advocates of the church, whose principal 
mission was the scientific formulation and the strict 
preservation of the pure teachings of the church. The 
art which developed under the protection of the 
Dominican order is characteristic of their rigidly 
learned and strictly scholastic spirit. While in the 
Franciscan art allegories are exceptional and a simple 
legendary narrative is usually preserved, the chief 

VOL. I. — 3 


32 Ube /^^i^^le Bge 

purpose of their rivals was to glorify in learned alle- 
gorical representations the moral and religious system 
of the great Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, the 
prince of mediaeval scholars. It is remarkable with 
what consecrated seriousness the artists endeavoured 
to translate these abstract thoughts, hardly to be 
appreciated by the senses, into the language of art. 
In the celebrated Apotheosis of St. .Thomas by 
Francesco Traini it was proposed to represent in a 
symbolic manner the spiritual influences which the 
saint received from different quarters and in turn 
exercised upon the believers, — an eflfect accomplished 
by means of a complicated system of rays, which fall 
upon and issue from St. Thomas. In the cycle of 
frescoes in the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella 
the subject was the importance of the Dominican order 
in the history of civilisation, its scientific system, and 
its severe office as a guardian of truth. About the 
papal throne lie the "watch-dogs of Christ" {Domini- 
canes) awaiting the call to spring upon the wolves 
(the heretics); farther en friars are preaching and 
the souls converted by their labours enter the heavenly 
portals. As here the practical, so on the corresponding 
fresco the scientific activity of the order is represented. 
St. Thomas sits on a Gothic throne, at the foot of which 
the conquered heretics Arius, Averroes, and Sabellius 
cower. There follow, personified by female figures, 
the sacred and profane sciences. One of them, holding 
the globe and sword, represents imperial power; an- 


Xater frescofpafnting 33 

other, with bow and arrow, the terrors of war, and 
a third, with an organ, is music. As earthly repre- 
sentatives of these allegorical conceptions the figures 
of men are added. 

Similarly, the political allegories, such as were cus- 
tomarily depicted in judicial and council chambers, 
are usually derived from the works of the greatest 
poetical genius of the day, Dante. After he had 
furnished the ideal of civic life, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 
of Siena, could paint his mural decorations in the 
Palazzo Pubblico, which, partly as pictures of manners, 
partly as an allegory, depicted the blessings of good 
and the evils of bad government. 

The symbolic and visionary subjects portrayed at 
the same time as the allegories are derived partly from 
Dante, partly from the teachings of the two mendicant 
orders. As popular preachers, the friars found a 
reference to the last judgment and the ensuing paradise 
and hell to be the most effective method of moving 
popular feeling. One of their number, Giacomino da 
Verona, describes paradise as a royal court in the 
heavens. The patriarchs and the prophets, enveloped 
in green, white, and blue mantles, the apostles, 
seated on golden and silver thrones, and the martyrs 
with roses in their hair, are gathered about the Eternal 
One in a life of untroubled joy. At Christ's side. 
His enthroned mother, beautiful as a flower, is greeted 
by the angels with the music of harps and jubilant 
hymns. Hell, on the other hand, is described as a 


34 XTbe /nM&Me Hoe 

city of the underworld, through which poisonous 
waters flow, and is vaulted with a metal sky. With 
great clubs the devils beat their victims; fire streams 
from their mouths; they howl like wolves and bark 
like dogs. In his Divina Commedia, Dante gave a 
classic form to these ideas, and fixed the dogmatic 
norm for art, not only for the division of the after-life 
into hell, purgatory, and paradise, but for the de- 
termination and infliction of eternal punishments. 

To the typical representations of the Last Judgment, 
the artist often added, as had indeed been an earlier 
custom, comprehensive pictures of paradise and hell. 
Andrea Orcagna and the great unknown painter of the 
Pisan Campo Santo tower above all others in work of 
this kind. While in Byzantine representations of the 
final judgment everything is portrayed in lifeless rigi- 
dity, here the highest psychic emotion prevails. Christ 
is the angry judge and the Madonna is the intercessor 
for mankind; while the Apostles look in fearful anxiety 
on the great event. Hell is conceived as a section of a 
subterranean mountain, the cliff-like walls of which 
separate the different classes of sinners. The terrible 
figure of Satan occupies the middle of the scene; 
flames blaze under him, and all kinds of tortures may 
be discerned. Paradise, in striking contrast, is a 
scene of bliss and jubilation. By avoiding motion 
and portraying only youthful heads with beaming 
eyes, Orcagna has achieved a really celestial effect; 
even the awful tragedy of the Last Judgment is 


JLater lfresco:*lpainttno 35 

powerless to disturb the blessed in their heavenly 
peace. 

The allegories of death also form an introduction to 
these representations of the after-life. At that time 
famine and war had decimated the nations and the 
great pestilence had held its triumphant progress 
through Europe. Believing that God's judgment was 
upon them, men had learned the truth of the old 
doctrine that one should always be prepared to appear 
before the judgment seat of the Almighty. At that 
time originated the poem of the three dead men who 
appeared to the three living with the solemn warning, 

" What ye are, that we were, 
What we are, that ye shall be." 

Jacopone wrote songs in which he celebrated Death, 
the great leveller, as the awful power which suddenly 
and treacherously enters flowering life. The counter- 
part of these poems in painting is the Triumph of 
Death in the Campo Santo of Pisa, probably the 
most important of all symbolic representations of the 
fourteenth century. Not only in his powerful form- 
ulation of the idea but also in observation of nature 
this master towers above the level of the school. 
Giotto had confined his landscapes to bare cliffs; 
here for the first time nature is painted in the garb 
of vegetation. Equally impressive is the realistic 
boldness with which he depicts the horses shying at 
the corpses or the gioup of maimed and crippled 
beggars. 


z6 XTbe /IDit)Me Bqc 

A certain stylistic progress over the works of Giotto 
may, indeed, be observed in other paintings. Orcagna 
and the Siennese supplemented him in psychological 
analysis. While Giotto interpreted powerful sentiment 
with dramatic perspicuity, Orcagna paints the finer, 
more quiet feelings, which live half in dreamland. 
Even when painting the Siennese hold fast to their 
native sentiment, thereby surpassing Giotto in 
psychical expression. Instead of his energetic nar- 
rative they prefer to depict mild visions; instead 
of deep passion, a gentle beauty; instead of dramatic 
life, a sentimental tenderness. 

The master who created the frescoes of the Spanish 
Chapel is conspicuous by reason of his realistic back- 
grounds. In one instance he shows a garden planted 
with fruit-trees and inhabited by young people picking 
the fruits or resting in the shade; in another, the 
cathedral of Florence exactly as it had been planned 
by contemporary architects. The school ot Padua 
went even farther in its realism. While Giotto was 
content to place the figures in the same plane in the 
simple style of a relief, the Paduans attempted difficult 
problems of perspective. Their architectural back- 
grounds are more correctly drawn and the distant 
figures are more properly diminished in size. The char- 
acters, also,'are conceived in a more individual, portrait- 
like manner, and the animals are observed as carefully 
as the men; as, for example, the slow and quiet tread 
of the oxen, which is rendered in an astonishing man- 


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Xater 3ftesco*paintfna 37 

ner. Even the nude, when it occurs in martyrdoms, 
is presented with considerable knowledge of nature. 

But even in cases like these we can hardly speak of 
an actually realistic development. When it is recorded 
of a pupil of Giotto, a certain Stefano, that on account 
of his naturalistic style he was called the "ape of 
nature," this must be taken with the same reservation 
as Boccaccio's statement about Giotto's naturalism. 
A more correct characterisation is that ot the com- 
mentator Benvenuto da Imola, who, in 1376 (forty 
years after Giotto's death), commenting on the verses 
in which Dante states that Giotto held the field in 
painting, notes: "Be it well observed that he still 
holds it; for since his day no greater has appeared." 
As in the middle ages the Byzantine, so during the 
fourteenth century the Giottesque style prevailed. 
The development consisted rather in the broadening 
of the subject-matter of painting than in technical 
improvements on Giotto. The forms which he created 
were sufficient for the translation of the principal 
spiritual ideas of the day into pictorial presentation 
effected by his successors. The latter approached the 
most obscure allegories, the most fantastic ideas of 
the future life, and the most learned dogmas of the 
church, endeavouring to express, in the language of 
form established by Giotto, an infinity of world-mov- 
ing ideals. Few attempted the technical perfection 
of these forms. As during the nineteenth century in 
the time of Cornelius, painting was the product of an 


rwv^b»jlj._^ 


38 TLbc /IDi5Me Hoe 

epoch predominantly literary, so in the irecenio the 
great poets and thinkers, Dante and Petrarca, swaying 
all minds, compelled the artist also to approach his 
work as a poet rather than as a painter. 


Cbapter 1I1I 

ITbe Bttergrowtb ot tbe /lDeMa:val Stvle 
in tbe jfitteentb Century? 

I. Cbe struggle of tbe ©ID wttb tbe TRew Spirit 

THE reaction against the thought-painting of the 
school of Giotto was more than necessary, it 
was a vital question. Instead of leaning upon 
the teachers of the church and the poets, painting 
had to learn to stand upon its own feet; instead of 
illustrating scholarship it had first to become mistress 
in its own house. That was the revolution which the 
fifteenth century effected. The triumphs of chastity, 
poverty, and of the church militant, and allegories of 
good and bad government, as the painters ot ideas had 
conceived them, were no longer treated. In place of 
dogmatic and didactic tendencies and of literary 
composition, we find simple pictures which bear in 
themselves the justification of their existence. Artists 
no longer poetised but observed ; they no longer painted 
thoughts but objects. The significance of the fifteenth 
century, therefore, consists in its gradual conquest of 
the visible world, and hand in hand with this the 
gradual development of the technique of painting. 
The great renaissance of culture at the beginning of 

39 


40 /iDeM^val Stifle in jf If teentb Century 

the quattrocento directed painting along this path. 
The civihsation of the middle ages was altogether 
ecclesiastical. The church regulated the customs of 
the people, taught them practical things, and, as far 
as it thought proper, instructed them in spiritual. 
But gradually, as humanity grew more mature, it 
repudiated this tutelage as compulsion, and the unity 
of mediaeval consciousness was lost in the breach. The 
senses and the intellect asserted their rights against 
asceticism and blind faith, and Christian humility 
yielded to the sense of personal strength. Instead of 
satisfying himself with the promise of future life, man 
began to establish himself upon the earth, and to make 
the forces and secrets of the universe subservient to 
him. New continents were discovered; revolutionary 
inventions were made in all lines of industrial activity; 
and it is well-known how, under the influence of these 
new principles, the great problem of an entire recon- 
struction of human knowledge appeared in the back- 
ground. No less well-known are the mighty results of 
the collapse of mediaeval ideals on public and private 
morals. It seemed as if suddenly the earth had been 
withdrawn from under the feet of mankind. All 
traditions which had until then the binding power 
were shattered, and all the shallowness of the 
human heart was revealed. If men had formerly 
considered the earthly life as a mere preparation for 
future happiness, they now wished to make the most 
of life upon the earth; if they had formerly gone about 


Struaole of ®l& witb IFlew Spirit 41 

in sackcloth and ashes, they now deHghted in fes- 
tivals and tourneys, in balls and mummeries, in 
luxury of the table and of dress. Along with the 
revival of the power of the senses came the rebellion 
against the state and the family. Writers appeared 
who in modern skepticism held up to laughter and scorn 
the system of morals enunciated by the monks and 
theologians. On every hand new states were formed: 
here monarchical despotisms of which he became the 
ruler who could elevate and maintain himself by force 
and terror; there civic republics, the victims of the 
wildest party strife, but at the same time flourishing 
through the industry of a free bourgeoisie. 

The art of a nation always develops along lines 
parallel with its ideas, culture, and customs. It is the 
mirror, the abbreviated chronicle of its time. In art, 
therefore, the trend towards the after-life gave way to 
love of the present; and the worldly joy of the epoch 
also found its expression in painting. Just as the 
fourteenth century, the age of mysticism, had revealed 
the depths of the soul-life, so now the fifteenth takes 
possession of the external world; as trade and 
navigation had discovered new worlds, so painting 
discovered life. She no longer seeks to arouse con- 
templative and pious sentiments, but rather to mirror 
the external world in all of its beauty. 

For such a task the technical achievements of the 
trecento were insufficient. Upon the expansion of the 
content of painting which it had accomplished, the 


42 /ll^et>ifcx>al Sti^e in f Ifteentb Century 

improvement of the means of representation had to 
follow. While the painting of the irecento, just because 
of its spiritual and didactic tendencies, had never 
achieved progress, the quattrocento, which was more 
modest in scope, was all the richer in purely artistic 
achievements. Not merely in their delight in the 
external world are its painters the real children of 
the time; but as technical pioneers they are the 
worthy associates of Columbus and Gutenberg. Only 
upon the foundations which the quattrocento had laid 
could modern painting arise. 

The revolution, however, was neither abrupt nor 
sudden. Too many different tendencies crossed in 
this century for it to be called, en hloc, the century 
of realism. The materialistic current directed upon 
the conquest of the external world formed but a 
single factor in this great movement of culture. It 
must not be assumed that all religion was at once 
forgotten and all questions of feeling were at once 
silenced. On the contrary, the doctrines of the 
wretchedness of the earthly existence and salvation 
by faith alone still found enthusiastic apostles. At 
the beginning of the century stands the wonderful 
figure of St. Catherine of Siena; and later Fra Giovanni 
Dominici and St. Anthony of Padua, through their ser- 
mons and writings, awakened a new religious enthu- 
siasm especially among women. The fifteenth century 
is an epoch in which the principles of two ages contend 
with each other — th« religious ideas of the waning 


I 


Bi^S^ntinism an& /ID\?sticism 43 

middle age and the worldly delight of the modern spirit. 
The same double tendency permeates painting. In 
contrast to the realists earnestly seeking after truth 
alone stand those who endeavour to unite the progress 
of the modern with the spirit of the middle age. While 
they do not scorn the technical achievements of con- 
temporaries, neither are they ready to relinquish the 
heritage of the past. For them the body is still the 
mere tenement of the soul, the earthly chrysalis en- 
closing the divine butterfly. They do not, like the 
realist, appeal to the eye, but to the heart and the 
spirit. A certain archaic attitude places their pictures 
even in external contrast with the others. For while 
the fifteenth century usually substituted scenes from 
nature for golden backgrounds, these masters, refining 
the usage of the middle age, were the first to recognise 
the full possibilities of the use of gold in painting. 
They were not satisfied to retain the golden back- 
grounds and use gold ornaments whenever possible; 
but went so far as to represent certain objects, like the 
keys of St. Peter and the jewels in the crown of the 
Virgin, in high gold relief, thus giving their pictures 
a solemn, richly archaic effect. As late as 1430 these 
progressive and conservative elements co-existed, 
equally justified by the tendencies of the age. 

1I1f. :i6e3antini5m auD ^gsticism 

The most conservative city, not only of Italy but of 
Europe, was Venice. She felt herself the daughter of 


44 /IDeMfcval Stple in jf ttteentb Century 

Byzantium ; for her power was principally in the Orient 
and her customs were Oriental. In the secluded life 
of the women, in the practice of the slave trade, and 
the costumes of the people, this was a fragment of 
the Orient on Occidental soil. Although a republic 
in name, the government was Byzantine. The power 
was in the hands of a few old aristocratic families 
who in art, as in their other opinions, were conservative. 
The solemn dignity and severe majesty of the Byzan- 
tine style and its dependence on rigidly traditional 
forms were far more in accordance with their character 
than an art which sought after novelties. The old was 
good enough. Quieta non movere was their motto. 
But the splendour of colour and bright glitter of 
Byzantine painting were also pleasing to the Venetian 
taste. The enchanting situation of Venice between 
sea and land and the bright glittering wares which 
came from the Orient — Persian carpets, shim- 
mering gems, and sparkling gold-ware— all of these 
had accustomed the eye of the Venetian to strong 
colour effects. Brightly-coloured marbles encrust the 
walls of St. Mark's and all of its cupolas are adorned 
with glittering mosaics. This solemn effect of gold, 
the severe splendour of the mosaics remained, even 
in the fifteenth century, their highest ideal. The 
Venetians, therefore, demanded of the panel picture 
the same splendour of colour, golden gleaming light, 
and solemn figures, surrounded by a trelliswork of 
rich ornaments, and arising mysteriously from a 


Bp3antfn(9in ant> /IDpsttclsm 45 

golden background. Such effects had long ago been 
achieved by Byzantine painting. 

As late as the fifteenth century Jacopo del Fiore and 
Michele Giambone were true representatives of this 
style. In their pictures saints bristling with gold and 
with emaciated, clumsily drawn figures appear in the 
midst of barbaric architecture of dazzling splendour. 
Archimandrites and patriarchs with long white beards, 
solemn as judges, raise their arms to bless the con- 
gregations kneeling in the dust. As late as 1430, and 
in a city of Italy, the cold and sublime spirit of Byzan- 
tinism prevailed; and with it that awfully empty and 
yet so powerful art, which, in its gloomy rigidity, re- 
flects as no other does the sense of power of the mediaeval 
church. Pictures were still painted from which one 
would never dream that, two centuries before, St. 
Francis of Assisi had preached there. 

Yet during the fifteenth century, and in Venice, 
mysticism also experienced a fragrant aftergrowth. A 
series of masters appeared to depict the mystic vision 
of the heaven on earth revealed by Duccio, Lorenzetti, 
and Wynrich, with even greater tenderness and charm 
than did older painters with their deficient technique. 
In a certain sense these masters followed the modern 
spirit. In contrast with the trecento, the century of 
the mendicant friars, they delighted in the splendour 
of this world. Luxuries that were pleasing to the 
rich — the dainty products of the goldsmith's art, 
pearls and treasures — were also used to adorn the 


46 /IDeC)ia^v>al St\?le in jfitteentb Century 

heavenly personages. The " Adoration of the Kings," 
especially, became a popular subject, because it offered 
an opportunity to depict, at the same time, a biblical 
subject and earthly pomp, pious humility and the 
splendour of life at court. In landscape, too, they 
make progress over their predecessors by the use of 
rose hedges, flower-decked meadows, and gaily-coloured 
birds singing in trellis work to attain the effect of 
paradise in their pictures. They even acquired the 
technical tricks of their contemporaries, modestly and 
not for dexterity's sake, but that they might, by means 
of these more perfect instruments, express more clearly 
those ideals which had justified the art of the trecento, 
those qualities in it which were eternal. As dreamers, 
not as observers, and with sensibility, not with the 
cold spirit of research, they used the new technical 
acquirements to reveal that great treasure of the 
trecento — the tenderness, fervour, and love which the 
spirit of mysticism had revealed. 

As late as 1450, sacred Cologne, the home of Suso, 
held fast to the style founded by Hermann Wynrich. 
It is true that an examination of the works of Stephan 
Lochner, who dominated the art of Cologne from 1442 
to 1 45 1, and especially of his celebrated masterpiece 
in the cathedral, will reveal a certain modest appearance 
of mundane elements. The spiritual endeavour to 
effect the absorption of all earthly into the divine 
element is no longer the only aim. "The bodies have 
lost their languor, the heads are rounder; the hands 


and arms are !css slender than in the earlier works. 
The feet, which formerly hardly dared to touch the 
earth, are now firmly planted. In the heads of the 
women the artist endeavours less to attain a modest 
and maidenly than a charming and arch expression. 
While the costumes were formerly ideal, enclosing 
the body in heavy masses of drapery, they now tend 
to follow the fashion of to-day." His language is 
that of a painter who with childish joy collects every- 
thing bright and sparkling to adorn his saints. Never- 
theless, there is no difl'erence in principle between his 
works and those of Wynrich. The innocence, blessed 
happiness, and spiritual beauty of the old master are to 
be found in these figures also. Like Wynrich, Lochner 
is not most at home in representing martyrdoms and 
dramatic incidents, but in depicting piety, humility, 
loving-kindness, and enchanting idyls. 

The beautiful Madonna of the Archiepiscopal 
Museum at Cologne is evidently earlier than the altar- 
piece of the cathedral. The figure of Mary has the 
fragile slenderness of the old epoch. Her thin arms, 
small hands, and narrow shoulders, the stoop of the 
figure, and the almost girlish tenderness of the child, 
which in its little frock feels half infant, half Saviour, 
are quite in accordance with the art of Hermann 
Wynrich. But the head of the Madonna, with hair 
carefully parted and encircled with a string of pearls, 
and the large clasp which adorns her mantle, point to the 
difference in time between Wynrich and Lochner. In 

VOL. I. ^ 


-t 


s /iDcDia:val 5tvnc in Jf itteeiUb Century? 


like manner his Madonna in an Arhour of Roses treats 
a theme popular since Wynrich's day. Two angels 
draw back a curtain and the heaven in gleaming 
splendour is revealed. Enthroned like a king, the 
Christ-child sits in the lap of Alary, who, adorned with 
a royal crown, is seated upon a grassy ridge. Angels 
make music and worship her, olTer fruits to the Christ- 
child, and break for him flowers from the rosehedge, 
in the branches of which little birds are singing. Al- 
though in this painting worldly joy is united with the 
spirit of abnegation, the dreamy longing and the 
heavenly peacefulness of the trecento hover like an 
echo from the other world over Lochner's work. 

The note which he had struck did not sink into 
silence after the master's death, but echoed like a 
sacred peal of bells through the land. It was even 
brought by a pupil to Venice, and in the next paintings 
of the City of the Lagoons we find the solemn majesty 
of Byzantium combined with the tenderness and 
mysticism of Cologne. It is probable that the Vivarini 
would not have relinquished the Byzantine manner 
had not Antonio of Murano, in 1440, formed a partner- 
ship with Johannes de Alemannia, seemingly a Cologne 
artist, who in his wanderings had come to Venice. 
The joint activity of these artists resulted in a series 
of pictures which presented a remarkable com- 
bination of solemnity and youthful freshness. The 
golden splendour so dear to the Venetians was re- 
tained, and furthermore all the figures were adorned 


3!Bs3Hntinisni an& iiO^sticism 49 

with gold and with precious stones, like princes in a 
fairy tale. Raised golden ornaments and ancient 
frames, with steep Gothic gables and with flowers 
and trelliswork, completed the impression of Oriental 
splendour which reverberated like a stirring hymn 
through these paintings. But there is also a novel 
element; a touch of new psychic life and a feeling for 
landscape. As in the German paintings, the throne 
of the Madonna is erected in a secluded, paradise- 
like garden, where brightly-coloured birds are nesting. 
Instead of the mummy-like figures of Byzantinism 
we find the youthful blessedness, the silent purity and 
gentle humility of a Stephen Lochner. After having 
at first confined themselves to traditional represent- 
ations of saints, the artists progressed to more 
narrative subjects. In Antonio's Adoration of the 
Kings, halos and crowns, weapons and trimmings 
of garments, arms and utensils, even the harness of 
the horses and the spurs of the riders — all appear in 
plastic relief. Yet the dainty, languishing figures of 
the youths are equally surprising by reason of their 
friendly and gracious charm. Here again a soft 
Cologne strain is curiously commingled with Byzan- 
tine splendour. 

Or should we rather speak of Umbrian than Cologne 
influence.? For there was a remarkable commingling 
of influences at Venice. While the painters of Murano 
were engaged upon their works, an Umbrian master had 
laboured in Venice who in the whole spirit of his art 


so /ICieDiicval Stple in df itteentb Century 

bears a curious resemblance to Lochner. Although 
the efforts of Venetian painters had previously been 
confined to churches, the Venetian government, in 
141 9, determined to provide the palace of the Doge 
with suitable mural decoration. The subject chosen 
was an incident from the glorious past of Venice— the 
mediation of this small but powerful state between 
Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander 111. As 
Byzantine painting was not capable of accomplishing 
such a task, the choice for the artist fell upon Gentile 
da Fabriano, who, although modern in style, was not 
an iconoclast, but full of respect for ancient tradition. 
The inhabitants of the mountain countries cling more 
tenaciously to their traditions than the inhabitants of 
large cities. As the mountain city of Siena had 
throughout the old century remained faithful to the 
principles of Duccio, so Umbria also, that quiet mount- 
ain district in whose valleys St. Francis had laboured, 
closed its doors to the modern spirit. The panels of 
Alegretto Nuzi and Ottaviano Nelli, the earliest 
Umbrian painters, echo the style of the trecento 
in tender, modest beauty: but it was reserved for 
Gentile to rescue Umbrian art from its provincial 
exclusiveness and transplant it to the soil of the cities: 
from the quiet chapels of distant villages to the festal 
halls of city palaces. The Adoration of the Kings, 
his most celebrated panel, painted in 1423 for Palla 
Strozzi, breathes the spirit of youth and the love of 
legend characteristic of the quattrocento. Gentileis indeed 


B^3anttnlsm an5 /ID\?6ticism 51 

an innovator; for the epic breadth in which he ren- 
ders the entire subject is quite as characteristic of the 
new reahsm as the refined feehng for landscape with 
which he scatters bright flowers through the mead- 
ows. But with him realism has not destroyed 
poetry. An indescribable charm of youth and of 
grace suflFuses all the precise details which he gives. 
Even the golden ornaments and the ancient looking 
frames with Gothic gables heighten the fairy-like 
effect. As Michelangelo observed: " Aveva la mano 
simile al nome "; and this gentile{{a, this timid and 
loving manner has not lost its charm with the 
centuries. 

Even in a large city like Florence there was a quiet 
and lonely cloister from whose walls all waves of the 
modern spirit recoiled — San Marco, the convent of 
the Dominicans, where the blessed Fra Giovanni da 
Fiesole laboured. Although no profound artist but 
more like a grown child in sentiment, he was yet the 
most lovable apparition of all these survivors of the 
middle age. The circumstance that he was not a 
native of a city, but of the village of Vicchio, and that 
he had lived until his fiftieth year in the hill towns of 
Cortona and Fiesole, is important for the analysis of 
his style. A man who did not come to Florence until 
his fiftieth year could no longer change his personality, 
even had he so wished. Not the contemporary mas- 
ters, but the works of the past epoch, especially those 
of Orcagna, were his guiding star; in the middle age 


i:^ 


52 /lDeMa:val St^ne in JFitteentF) Century 

lay the sources of his power. In Santa Croce and 
Santa Maria Novella he absorbed to such an extent the 
feeling of the irecenio, that he was henceforth proof 
against the realistic tendences of his day. 

In a certain sense Fiesole too is an innovator. His 
eye lingers lovingly on the landscape; the pleasing 
forms of mountains sometimes serve him as a back- 
ground, and he never tires of painting the meadow 
in the garb of spring when a thousand flowers are bud- 
ding. He also acquired some familiarity with per- 
spective, and occasionally there appear in his paintings 
heads painted from living models. 

But these things do not determine the character of 
his art, which in its gentle soulfulness is quite of the 
irecenio, or reminds us even more, perhaps, of the most 
delightful of the Germans, Stephen Lochner. As in 
the case of Lochner, the scale of the good jraie's feeling 
is not extensive; for he was himself so good that he 
was unable to realise the bad. As Walter von der 
Vogelweide has a comical effect when he attempts to 
swear, so Fra Angelico in depicting evil. His devils 
are very harmless little chaps who are quite satisfied 
with innocent pinching and squeezing, and do even 
this good-naturedly, as if ashamed of their profession. 
His pictures of martyrdoms create the impression of 
boys disguised as martyrs and executioners; and his 
bearded men weeping like women are equally incred- 
ible. But when he does not leave his proper sphere, 
and the problem is to portray tender feelings, a great 


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3B^3antinism ant) /ID^sticism 53 

and silent joy of the heart, a holy ecstasy or tender 
sadness, his pictures have the effect of the silent prayer 
of a child. And for this heavenly world, the only real 
world for him, he has also found the suitable, rosy, and 
joyful colours: a transparent blue, a jubilant red, 
yellow that gleams like honey, and gold which like a 
heavenly splendour encircles ctlestial beings. 

San Marco owes it to him that it has become the most 
sacred cloister in the world. Even in the confusion of 
picture galleries, one forgets the world in the presence 
of Fiesole's pictures: whether he depicts Mary receiving 
in modest confusion the message of the angel; or the 
rich kings from afar, who, in such unbounded humil- 
ity, worship the Christ-child; the kneeling Apostles 
thankfully and joyfully receiving the host from the 
Saviour; or the friends of our Lord as, thoughtful and 
melancholy, they assemble around the cross; fair- 
haired angels, who celebrate in joyous transports, 
with harps and song, the crowning of the Blessed 
Virgin; or the the elect, crowned with red and white 
roses, marching with stately tread to paradise. A pic- 
ture of the last-named subject, now in the Berlin 
Gallery, is perhaps the most beautiful of his works. 
Since his day thousands who were far greater techni- 
cians have painted the other world, but in no 
paradise would one so gladly live as in Fiesole's— 
that beautiful, innocent world where it is always 
Sunday: v/here the child finds his toys again, the friend 
his friend, and the lover his mistress. These blessed 


54 /r>eMa:val Stv?le in if ifteentb Century? 

ones who gaze, astonished as children on Christmas- 
day, upon the glory of heaven, the mystic dances on 
the flower-strewn sod, the movements of the dainty, 
tender bodies, which revolve more melodiously, more 
ethereally, the nearer they approach their heavenly 
home — such paintings involve a world of poesy. 

Even in Rome, where at the close of his life Angelico 
decorated the chapel of Nicholas V. with frescoes, one 
remains standing before his works in thoughtful re- 
flection, after having walked through Raphael's Stanze. 
Here, indeed, influenced by his pupils, he used a some- 
what more modern style, avoiding all archaisms and 
golden splendour; buildings drawn in proper per- 
spective fill the background. But even with these 
concessions to the modern spirit, his native lovableness 
has not suffered. His old sincerity, the solemn moder- 
ation and delicacy of taste still remain. And when 
in the Vatican, even compared with Raphael, the art 
of Fiesole enchains us, it only proves something which 
later ages often forgot: that soul alone can speak to 
soul; the soul of painting, and not its form, is immortal. 

1(1I1[. Zbe ]EnD of the /nbonumeutal Stgie 

Outside of the quiet cloisters of San Marco, 
there was little room for mysticism in a city like 
Florence. The circumstance that Fiesole, himself 
a Dominican friar, painted not scholastic but 
rather mystical subjects, shows a certain progressive 
tendency which is characteristic. As in the four- 


3£nD of tbe /Iftonumental St\?le 55 

teenth century Florence was the soil from which 
the virile and objective art of Giotto grew, so in 
the fifteenth it produced a painter who bears the 
same relation to Fiesole that the epic and serious 
Giotto bore to the gentle and dreamy Siennese. 
Giotto born again and beginning at the point 
where death had cut off his development — such 
is Masaccio. He it was, and Masolino, who conducted 
the school of Giotto into the fifteenth century. 

From an external point of view (he was a pupil of 
Stamina) Masolino is connected with the school of 
Giotto. His frescoes in San Clemente at Rome are 
distinguished from the works of the Giotteschi by a 
more lively feeling for reality, a softer expression 
in the heads, and less stiffness in motion. There is 
something innocent and pure in the expression of the 
figures, and the whole character of presentation is 
strikingly simple and natural. A member of the 
painters' guild of Florence in 1423, he received in the 
same year the commission to decorate the chapel of 
the Brancacci in Santa Maria del Carmine, dedicated 
in the preceding year, with frescoes of the Life of St. 
Peter. On the wall to the right he painted a large 
picture representing the Healing of the Lame Man 
and the Raising of Tabitha, on the pilaster to the 
right the Fall of Man, and on the window wall 
Peter Preaching, From these works also an artist 
speaks to us who originated in the school of Giotto, 
but endeavours to enliven and change its style. 


56 /KeMfeval Sti?le In jftf teentb Century 

In the chief fresco, beside the ideally clothed group of 
Apostles, two Florentines, in dapper costume of the 
day, cross the street. The relation of the figures to 
the building is more correct in perspective than Giotto 
ever achieved, and the nude, in the case of Adam and 
Eve, is more correctly drawn than in preceding 
works. 

In his later paintings he endeavours even more ener- 
getically to attain liveliness of expression and fresh 
episodic narrative. Especially the frescoes of the 
History of John the Baptist, painted in 1428-45 at 
Castiglione d'Olona, involve a wealth of lively, piquant 
traits. The heads of the men are partly portraits, and 
in the women, who in Giotto's work have a rather 
sullen and hard expression, a delicate feeling for beauty 
and a refined sense of worldly charm appear. In the 
picture of the Baptism of John he has portrayed the 
nude bodies of the converts, even in the most difficult 
postures, with astonishing sureness. Considering also 
the modern costumes — the curious caps, short mantles, 
and sumptuous fabrics — it must be conceded that the 
artist has almost entirely broken with the taste of the 
trecento. Only the rigid landscapes, composed of a 
series of bare cliffs, follow the earlier style. 

Following a call to Hungary in 1425, Masolino 
broke off his work in the Brancacci Chapel, which was 
taken up by Masaccio. On the pilaster to the left, the 
latter depicted the Expulsion from Paradise; on 
the altar-wall the Contribution of Alms and Peter 


MASACCIO 



THE EXPULSION FROM PARADISE 

Fresco in the Brancacci Chapel, S. M. del Carmine, Florence 


Bn^ ot tbe Monumental St^^le 57 

Visiting the Sick; and on the wall to the left the 
Tribute Money and the Raising of the King's Son. 
By virtue of these works Masaccio is now generally 
celebrated as the real founder of the new style. Let 
us consider with what justice. 

It is true that his pictures contain a wealth of new 
elements. Contrasted with the frightened couple 
fleeing from paradise, followed by the angel with drawn 
sword, the works of Masolino seem mere awkward 
designs. In the Tribute Money the image of 
Peter, throwing back his mantle and bending over 
to seize the fish with such eagerness that the blood 
rushes to his face, was long ago praised by Vasari 
because of its striking realism. In the picture of the 
Raising of the King's Son the figure of the kneeling 
youth early became an object of admiration and of 
copying, because of the sure mastery of the nude 
displayed. While Masolino's buildings seem laboriously 
constructed, Masaccio has, apparently without effort, 
achieved the harmonious relations which appear in 
space. Whereas the former, as a disciple of Cennini, 
still retains the rigid, cake-like forms of mountains, 
the latter portrays, for the first time in art, the quiet 
lines of the valley of the Arno. The difference in 
colour also deserves attention. Masolino still pre- 
serves the pleasing rosy tone which Giotto loved; but 
Masaccio has adopted a more powerful colour scheme, 
which no longer endeavours to attain the effect of faded 
gobelins but aims at natural truth, it is also customary 


58 /iDeMa^val St\?le in jf tttcentb Century 

to emphasise, as a characteristic of his reahsm, an 
external feature, the treatment of the halo. While in 
the older style, even in the case of Masolino, the halo 
appears as an immovable circle about the head of the 
figures, Masaccio treats it as an actual disc suspended 
horizontally above the head, and participating in all 
the movements of the body. 

The question at issue, however, is whether it was in 
these innovations that Masaccio's greatness consisted; 
whether his works should be considered as paradigms 
of Renaissance painting. Episodic details, con- 
temporary fashions, and portrait heads, which appear 
so numerous even with Masolino, are justly considered 
innovations of the quattrocento ; but Masaccio has 
none of these. He makes a very limited use of por- 
traits, merely venturing to place his own among the 
Apostles. Far from giving a literal reproduction of 
his model, he ennobles and idealises, he raises individual 
to majestic qualities. Contemporary costumes, which 
appear but seldom in his paintings, are restricted to 
the spectators; while the saints, as in the earlier period, 
wear the antique toga, the drapery of which he models 
with simple grandeur. Genre episodes and conspic- 
uous tours de force in perspective do not appear; not 
that he does not understand how to solve difficult 
problems, but rather shuns them in order not to dis- 
turb the great, quiet harmony of his work. Even in 
landscape backgrounds he avoids all naturalistic detail, 
confining himself to simple and majestic lines. 


BiiD ot tbe /IDoniiinental Stifle 59 

Masaccio's greatness lies not in his realism, but rather 
in the quiet repose, the grandiose simplicity, and the 
solemn style of his work. Although combined with 
more technical ability, his is still the heroic style 
created by Giotto a hundred years before. It is no 
accident that the masters of the cinquecenio chose 
Masaccio as their leader. When the reaction against 
the naturalism and detailed realism of the quattrocento 
began, the young painters thronged to the Brancacci 
Chapel as to a university. Here Michelangelo received 
from Torregiani the well known blow that flattened his 
nose, and Raphael made those copies which he after- 
wards used in his Roman frescoes. It was not the 
realist in Masaccio that they admired, but the qualities 
of Giotto which he had preserved for modern art — the 
sustained grandeur and the impressive dignity of his 
style. 

Parallel with Masaccio in this regard are the works 
of a northern master, who, like a solemn patriarch of a 
bygone age, lives on into a new epoch — Hubert van 
Eyck. Of equal importance with the Brancacci fres- 
coes for Italian art were the monumental figures of 
the Ghent altar-piece for northern art. 

Like Masaccio, Hubert van Eyck belongs as a tech- 
nician to the new epoch. He in particular made prac- 
ticable the use of a vehicle for the expression of 
that natural truth which the new epoch demanded: 
colour. The light, pale, bodiless tints of the earlier 
artists sufficed as long as the problem of painting was 


6o /lDeMa:v>al Sti^e in ff if teentb Century? 

confined to the expression of purely visionary effects; 
they were insufficient as soon as real illusion and 
striking natural truth were required. The most varied 
experiments in colour were therefore attempted 
throughout the century. On the one hand, the ancient 
tempera technique was raised to new perfection; not 
in measured harmonies, but by placing the colours side 
by side, full, powerful, and bright, thus achieving by 
contrast a heightened effect. On the other hand, the 
invention of oil painting supplied a vehicle even more 
pliant for the new requirements; to have first used 
this technique in panel painting was the achievement 
of the great master of Maaseyck. 

It is not known whence he came, nor can his devel- 
opment be traced in any youthful works. When he 
began the work with which his name is for all time con- 
nected, the altar-piece of Ghent, he was nearly seventy 
years of age,i and he left it for his brother to complete. 
It is even questionable how far the altar-piece as it is 
seen to-day corresponds with the plan of the original 
designer. Only one thing seems certain — that the 
panels of God the Father, Mary, John the Baptist, 
and the Angels making Music are by the hand of 
Hubert. 

Most astonishing is the artistic power which the 
work reveals. The blue, green, and red mantles enve- 
loping the figures as in flames; the shimmering 

' This computation would place Hubert's birth about 1356 (for he 
died in 1426), antedating by ten years the earliest estimates of his 
birth year hitherto reached (including Professor Muther's). — Ed 


Bn& of tbe /IDonumental Stifle 6i 

tiara studded with diamonds, pearls, and amethysts; 
the sceptre adorned with precious stones, and the 
heavy brocaded garments of the angels; the glittering 
agraffes, the sheen of the oak-wood and the gleam of 
the organ pipes — such effects of colour an earlier painter 
would have attempted in vain to produce. 

In like manner does his draughtsmanship far excel 
that of an earlier period. The figures are seated as 
if they were actual bodies, not ethereal spirits, but 
corporeal beings of ffesh and blood. He has even 
deprived the angels of their shadowy qualities and 
placed them in the choir of St. John's church, where 
the tones of the organ peal forth and the music of 
viols and harps sounds. 

Yet the parallel with Masaccio is a correct one; for 
the naturalism and the splendour of colour of the new 
epoch are interwoven with the sublimity of the medi- 
£eval style. However material the figures may be, 
they hover beyond all earthly reach; however well 
painted and designed, the impression they give is 
less one of the quaitrocenio than of those solemn saints 
who, encircled by the splendour of mosaics, sit enthroned 
in the apse of early Christian churches. As in Italy, 
so in the Netherlands there flourished during the mid- 
dle age a great monumental style, of which Hubert's 
works are but a reflection. Mighty sublimity, simple 
grandeur, and consecrated dignity — such are the 
epithets which best characterise his panels. Their 
intimate relation to the works of Masaccio is also 


I 


62 /iDeMa:val St^ile in jfitteentb Century? 

shown by their effect upon succeeding generations. 
The painters of the quattrocento had forgotten Hubert 
van Eyck; but when the passion for naturahsm had 
been satiated, and the yearning for a monumental 
style returned, a great German stood reflecting before 
the altar-piece of Ghent. In the presence of Hubert's 
God the Father, Diirer first conceived his Four 
Apostles. 


Zhe URcwmmncc 


VOL. I. — 5 


Cbapter 11 

IRature an& BntiQue 

If. ^bc jflret IReallstg 

UP to this time, the art of the fifteenth century 
had presented nothing new. Although it had 
indeed acquired a better draughtsmanship and 
created new means of expression in colour, its style 
thus far had remained that of the past. Not until 
art had definitely broken with tradition, until there 
had been an after development of the mediaeval style 
from Byzantinism through Mysticism down to the 
monumental art of Giotto, did painting turn into 
new paths. Artists then appeared who, unconnected 
with the past, began quite anew, as if the use of brush 
and colour had just been invented for them. Change 
followed change, and a revolution occurred, more rap- 
idly perhaps than any in our own nervous century. 

The subject-matter of painting indeed remained 
ecclesiastical; for the Church was still the principal 
patron of art. But as the artists were not permitted 
to paint earthly subjects without a biblical mask, 
their worldly tendencies found satisfaction in another 
way: by making all religious painting worldly, 

Giotto had avoided portraiture, and Masaccio 

65 


66 IRature an& Bntfque 

confined himself to portraying himself and Masolino 
among the spectators in the Tribute Money. Now, 
at one sweep, all paintings are filled with portraits. 
Not satisfied with inserting their own into biblical pic- 
tures, artists even added, in life size, the portraits 
of the donors, which had formerly appeared either not 
at all or else in very diminutive size. Man no longer 
felt himself a dwarf in the presence of the saints, but 
as an equal among equals. They then went further, 
introducing their friends and protectors as patriarchs, 
apostles, and martyrs among biblical scenes. The 
final step was to deprive the saints of their 
supernatural character. All beings who had formerly 
lived in the domain of idealism were changed into 
men of flesh and blood, to be distinguished from 
others only by the halo above their heads. 

This resemblance is by no means confined to the 
heads, but extends also to the costumes. The quatiro- 
cenio was perhaps the most splendour-loving epoch 
in the history of civilisation; a century inexhaustible 
in the invention of new fashions, which allowed no 
edicts against luxury to rob it of its pleasure in the 
toilet. All these bizarre fashions were adopted by 
art. While Masaccio, following the principles of Giotto^ 
had enveloped most of his figures in flowing draperies 
resembling those of the statues of the antique orators, 
in contrast to this ideal style the art of the following 
epoch creates the impression of a great book of fashion 
plates. Delighting in the smallest detail of costume 


Ube iFitst IReaUsts 67 

artists furnished even the saints with the most piquant 
toilettes: coquettish Httle cloaks trimmed with feathers, 
and impossible head-dresses. An exquisite dandyism 
seemed to have affected the inhabitants of heaven 
as well as of this world. If the picture represents a 
Madonna, an earthly family-scene is actually portrayed. 
Mary has laid off the hieratic costume; her hair is 
coquettishly dressed and she wears a tight bodice 
with rich border and adorned with delicate needlework. 
The Christ-child holds a starling or a flower, listens 
to the word of his mother or lies on her breast; and 
it became a favourite practice to give him the infant 
St. John as a playfellow. Purely genre scenes took the 
place of devotional pictures. The Adoration of the 
Kings was converted into a complete picture of 
contemporary manners; the kings of Bethlehem 
are princes of the quattrocento, attended by a rich 
train of men at arms and Oriental slaves, just as 
they would appear in making a visit to a foreign court. 
As the episodes were transferred to the immediate 
present, since only the present seemed true and beauti- 
ful, so the most different elements were introduced, 
things having no connection with the principal event 
and owing their existence solely to the pleasure which 
the artist took in the beauty of the world: here an 
amusing episode, there some graceful animal like 
a bird, a hare, a monkey or a dog; there again, flowers 
and fruit. Pleasure, splendour, riches, everything 
but piety is characteristic of these pictures. Every- 


68 14atuie anO Hnticiuc \ 

thing beautiful that Hfe offered is woven into bright 
and gleaming nosegays. 

Even the technical execution betrays to what extent 
earthly joy predominated over religious feeling. The 
care with which the principal figures are executed is 
extended to the smallest detail. While in the pictures 
of the trecento, even with Fiesole and Masaccio, the 
accessories played no part, but were indicated only 
when they served to make the principal event clearer, 
now vessels, carpets, arms, and flowers are executed 
with such care as if the subject were an independent 
still-life. The result is that the art of the quattrocento, 
although the subjects are biblical, nevertheless involves 
the entire profane painting of later centuries; and that 
in these works, even though they represent saints, the 
whole epoch with its people, costumes, arms and 
utensils, dwelling rooms and buildings, lives on as in a 
great picture-book of the history of civilisation. 

The backgrounds of these paintings also show a 
radical innovation. In contrast to Giotto, who had 
indicated the scene of action by conventional forms of 
buildings and cliffs, and to Lochner, who had con- 
structed ideal gardens of hedges and roses, the artists 
of the quattrocento conceived the actual earth as the 
natural home for their very human saints. The rooms 
in which they Hved are the same which may still be 
found in ancient cities; rooms with heavy wooden 
ceilings, panelled walls, majolica tiles, and carved 
furniture. The landscapes through which they stride 


Zbc dfirst IRealists 69 

are the same upon which the sun still shines. Whereas 
Masaccio, Lochner, and Fiesole had confined themselves 
to powerful lines and modest suggestions, those who 
followed never tired of a circumstantial description of 
all details. The background is filled with buildings, 
views of cities, towers and palaces, sometimes crowning 
the ridge of a mountain, sometimes extending into 
fertile plains. Even in interior scenes there is usually 
a view through a window upon woods, meadows, rivers, 
and hills. Much more is given than the eye can discern 
in nature. Hazy and melting effects do not exist for 
the sharp eye of these painters. Not only are the grass 
and flowers of the foreground painted stem for stem 
and leaf for leaf; but even in the far distance objects 
retain equally sharp outlines and colours. 

Although this may often seem unnatural to the 
modern eye, we can easily understand the feelings that 
swayed the artists. The logical reaction against an art 
to which natural scenery had for so long been strange, 
and which permitted only golden backgrounds, was just 
such a richly detailed landscape, which in its reverential 
pantheism thought the smallest leaf with its spark- 
ling dewdrop equally important with the proud 
palm, and the pebble with the mighty cliff; which would 
not permit cloudy atmosphere to darken the brightness 
of things; and which in a single work would fain have 
sung the whole richness of form and colour in the 
universe. Even the church reconciled itself with the 
new views. When Raymond of Sabunde, in his 


70 IRature an& Bntiqne 

Theologia Naiuralis, taught that nature was a book 
written by the finger of God, he gave its blessing to the 
worldly delight of the age and to the efforts of the 
artist to depict it. 

As the altar-piece of Ghent is the last echo of the 
mediaeval conception of art, so it is also the first classical 
expression of the new worldly style. Although Jan 
van Eyck was but twenty years younger than Hubert, 
a whole world seems to separate him from his brother. 
The solemn, ideal style of Hubert is of the middle age; 
but the art of Jan is firmly planted in the soil of modern 
times. That he completed the altar-piece of Ghent 
as Hubert had originally planned it, seems very doubt- 
ful. Even from the panels in which it was necessary 
for him to follow his brother's designs, another spirit 
speaks. As he could never have created the three 
mighty central figures of the altar, he was also unable 
to attain his brother's excellence in the panel of the 
Singing Angels which he painted as a pendant to 
Hubert's Angels Making Music. With Hubert not 
only the faces but the hands also are inspired with 
nervous life; through these nimble fingers the spirit of 
music streams. But in Jan's Singing Angels, how- 
ever highly Karel van Mander praises them, the faces 
are spiritless, the hands are clumsy and badly drawn. 
He possessed neither the spiritual greatness and the 
serious thoughtfulness of his brother nor his plastic 
sense for the organic construction of the body. Even 
in the panels, which in accordance with the plan of the 


JAN VAN EYCK 



GIOVANNI ARNOLFINI AND IIIS WIFE 

National Gallery, London 




XTbe jflrst IRealtsts 71 

altar had to be rendered in large form, he speaks to us 
as a miniature painter whose eye rests only upon the 
coloured surface of things. 

His figures of the Two Donors are the first real 
portraits in modern art. They are genuine types 
of the sterling burgher class which had made Flanders 
the wealthiest country of the earth: the husband a 
wealthy and rather dull hon vivant, who after the 
day's successful labour has settled himself to repose; 
his wife a true mistress of the house, with the highly 
respectable features of a lady used to command. In 
the panel of the Annunciation he places the chief 
emphasis upon the still-life — a room containing a 
washbasin and all kinds of household furniture, and 
with a view through a window upon the street. In 
the figures of Adam and Eve, he does not strive, like 
Masaccio, after great lines and spiritual content, but 
confines himself to reflecting with photographic accu- 
racy the sunken breast and the prominent abdomen 
of Eve, the hair of Adam's legs, the pale colour of the 
skin of the body, and the darker hue of the hands. 

He was not in his real element until he painted 
the lower panels with the many small figures: the 
Adoration of the Lamb, the Just Judges and 
the Soldiers of Christ the Holy Anchorites and 
Hermits. Thus, indeed, are the panels inscribed; 
but from the figures themselves it would be difficult 
to surmise a biblical significance. They are men of 
flesh and blood, in no sense resembling the ideally 


72 IRatuic an^ Bntique 

draped and spiritual beings of the older epoch. On 
one side he has painted the Burgundian princes riding 
with their train to the hunt; on the other, monks and 
beggars, the rabble of the road, as with swollen feet, 
sunburned faces, and care-worn brows, they stride 
over the stony soil. 

Even more fascinating than the people is the land- 
scape. The sky is no longer golden but blue, and 
the grass-covered sod stretches far into the distance. 
Daisies, anem.ones, violets, dandelions, strawberries, 
and pansies are in bloom; in the bushes the roses glow; 
cypresses, orange and pine trees tower aloft, and in 
dark arbours purple grapes shimmer. 

This southern character of nature at the same 
time calls to mind why Jan was destined to be the 
father of landscape painting. He may have derived 
the first impulse from the miniature-paintings; for 
the novelties which he introduced into the altar-pieces 
had long been customary in illuminated manuscripts, 
which as an aristocratic luxury might possess greater 
wealth of detail and maintain a more worldly character 
than religious panels. In his position as valet de 
chambre, he probably saw many a Book of Hours 
which was inaccessible to ordinary mortals; and what 
he learned as a court painter was used for the benefit 
of the good donor of the altar, Jodocus Vydt. But 
the determining active factor was another event in 
his life. Wide travel necessarily directs the attention 
to the strange things in the new surroundings. The 


Ube jfiist IRealiBts 73 

air appears bluer, the distant view awakens a more 
sentimental mood, and the earth seems more beautiful. 
Things passed listlessly by at home suddenly acquire 
a new meaning. As in the nineteenth century artists 
made pilgrimages to Italy, Norway, and the Orient 
before depicting their native home, so for Jan van 
Eyck a journey which in 1428 he made to Portugal 
in the service of the Duke of Burgundy proved a reve- 
lation. In southern climes nature was more fully 
revealed to him, and upon his return home he enthu- 
siastically embodied in his paintings the memories 
of what he had seen in foreign lands. 

In his independent works he followed even further 
his personal inclinations. While Hubert, as the 
offshoot of the old monumental painting, depicted 
only the sublime and always maintained a solemn 
tone, Jan, as a descendant of the miniaturists, is the 
painter of detail par excellence; the unsurpassed an- 
cestor of all Fortunys and Meissoniers, who, in his 
small cabinet pictures has created works as delightful 
in workmanship as they are delicate in colour. His 
little Madonnas, indeed, make no attempt to awaken 
pious sentiment. If the older masters attempted 
to ascend to heaven, Jan brought heaven down to 
earth; if they had visions of the other world, Jan 
painted simple episodes of life. 

While the painters of Cologne drew all figures tall 
and slender, like the soaring pillars of Gothic archi- 
tecture, Jan van Eyck painted them heavy-set; and 


74 IRature an& Hnttquc 

in order to create a suitable background, instead of 
the soaring Gothic, he used the massive Romanesque 
style. In their works a heavenly longing gleams in 
Mary's eyes, but Jan paints her as a healthy Flemish 
mother. With them the figures lived in Paradise, 
with him in the midst of a joyous reality. Sometimes 
he reveals Mary in the interior of a church, in which 
an architectural perspective, with the interesting effects 
of light streaming through stained glass windows, 
opens to view; sometimes the background is a simple 
living room, affording the opportunity of reproducing 
a veritable still-life of pewter dishes, lamps, tankards, 
gleaming water-bottles and carpets; or again she stands 
in the open air and the eye beholds churches, palaces, 
gardens, streams, market-places and streets in the dis- 
tance. It is astonishing how upon a bit of canvas of 
the size of a hand he can produce the effect of furthest 
distance; with what fidelity he renders the sheen of 
metal, every blade of grass in a landscape and the 
very dewdrop upon it; and lets the light play and 
shimmer on shining armour, a crystal globe or a piece 
of goldsmith's work. 

It might even be said that little pictures of this 
kind form the culmination of the entire technical 
skill of the northern art during the middle ages. For 
the fascinating quality of Gothic buildings, tabernacles, 
pulpits, and baptismal fonts of the fourteenth century 
is neither the harmony of proportion, purity of line, 
nor delicacy of decoration; but rather the incredible 


ITbe jfivst IRealiBts 75 

skill with which the fretwork, rosettes, and other 
decorative features are carved and fitted together 
just as if the material were not hard stone, but soft 
enough to be kneaded in the hand. Now in 
the fifteenth century these manual gymnastics re- 
dounded to the benefit of painting. After the 
eye had once accustomed itself to the actual forms 
of nature, the hand was soon able to master them 
v/ith the juggling surety of the Gothic architects in 
stone. 

But a glance at Italy will show that it would not 
be correct to regard miniature painting as a specifically 
northern peculiarity. It was a natural reaction from 
the monumental style of the earlier epoch, and therefore 
found as enthusiastic followers in Italy as in the Nether- 
lands. The qualities which in the north are attrib- 
uted to Jan van Eyck are identified in the south 
with Pisanello. It is not impossible that there was a 
mutual influence, since, according to the account of 
Facius, painters from the Netherlands were active 
in Verona. At all events, Pisanello is as nearly related 
to the Netherlander as he is different from his country- 
man Masaccio. Where the latter rendered only ideal 
types, Pisanello paints his contemporaries; and whereas 
Masaccio retained the ideal costume of Giotto, Pisan- 
ello never tires of depicting small cloaks, hosiery, enor- 
mous hats, and dainty pointed shoes. The delight of 
the quattrocento in the wardrobe now finds place in sacred 
pictures. Smiling landscapes stretch before us, and, 


76 "Wature an^ Hntique 

as in the case of Jan van Eyck, animals move and 
live among the biblical figures. 

The frescoes which he painted in Verona differ as 
widely from those of the Brancacci Chapel as the 
lower panels of the altar-piece of Ghent from the 
monumental figures of the upper row. They are the 
works of an interesting charmer, who expresses neither 
spiritual nor formal thoughts, but who observes men 
and things with a refined and refreshing glance. In- 
stead of biblical stories he portrays knightly processions 
and hunting expeditions. Partridges, dragons, dogs, 
and horses are mingled in the respectable assembly of 
saints, who in their dandified, tight-fitting clothes 
seem personages from Boccaccio rather than the 
Bible. In their visit to the Christ-child, his three 
kings have brought along all their pages, equerries, 
hunting dogs, and falcons, and appear in a landscape 
of the Lake of Garda rich in villas, vineyards, herds 
of sheep, and birds flying about. His St. George, 
in a cuirass and with an enormous felt hat, resembles 
a condottiere of the fifteenth century; while St. Hubert, 
the mighty hunter, only affords him an opportunity 
to populate a thick wood with dogs, hares, rabbits, 
and bears. Even his drawings betray that he was at 
heart more an animal than a biblical painter. 

Finally he resembles Jan van Eyck in this respect, 
that he was the first to paint purely profane pictures 
and to elevate portraiture to a separate branch, equally 
justified with religious painting. 


tTbe jfirst IRealtsts 77 

Before the fifteenth century portraiture did not 
exist. Sovereigns alone had the right to be immortal- 
ised i<Q statues and mosaics, and portraits were only 
permitted as plastic decoration of tombs. The spirit 
of the new epoch first awoke in the fourteenth century. 
Men wished to leave behind them traces of their 
earthly career, to hand down their names and effigies 
to distant generations, and thus achieve immortality 
on the earth. On a wall in the Bargello, Giotto de- 
picted the poet of the Divine Comedy among the blessed 
in Paradise, and it is related of Simone Martino that 
he went to Avignon of his own accord in order to 
portray Petrarca. But Giotto's picture is rather 
silhouette than portrait, and an idea of the portrait- 
ure of Simone Martino is furnished by his fresco of 
Guidoriccio Fogliani de' Ricci, which certainly does 
not greatly resemble the original. Art was yet too 
much swayed by the typical to succeed with the 
individual characterisation. 

In the fifteenth century, not only had the love of 
fame grown to such an extent that every rich citizen 
henceforth felt the need of handing down his lineaments 
to posterity, but art had now acquired the ability to 
portray them with strict fidelity to nature. In Italy 
it became the vogue to adorn mantels and friezes with 
colored portrait busts; or at least to preserve likenesses 
on a bronze medal. 

To Pisanello belongs the fame of having, upon the 
basis of memorial coins, revived the medallist's art, 


-4 


78 Bature au& antique 

and of having applied the style of the medal to paint- 
ing. As the medal is based upon a negation of 
depth, his painted portraits are confined to the profile 
view, the heads being drawn with plastic severity. 
In place of the metal background of the medal, he 
used a carpet-like ornament of a monochrome mass, 
upon which the profile is firmly planted. 

In the Netherlands there was no such connection 
with the medallist's art, and the portrait of Jan van 
Eyck consequently differed from Pisanello's in that 
they never presented the heads in profile, but in three- 
quarters view. While the Italian draws the charac- 
teristic line, the Fleming paints the coloured surface. 
Common to both, however, is the endeavour to present 
human physiognomy with the uncompromising reality 
and the unbounded exactitude of the photographic 
apparatus. As landscape painters, who had formerly 
been permitted to render golden backgrounds only, 
now painted every pebble, leaf, dewdrop, and blade of 
grass, so portrait painters, who had previously been 
confined to general types, now delighted, with veritable 
passion, in crisp details, such as wrinkles, furrows, 
warts, and stubs of beards. Even in the choice of 
models they proceeded in accordance with this point 
of view. For while they seeem to have avoided youth- 
ful portraits, both male and female, the shrivelled 
heads of old men and women are subjects after the 
heart of these realistic artists. Think of the rugged 
old man in the Berlin Gallery, holding with comic 


XTbe iFirst IRealists 79 

earnestness a pink in his handi; or the strange head of 
Arnolfini, particularly in his Betrothal in London 
which, with its rich accessories so illustrative of the 
customs of the day, already contains the germ of later 
genre painting. 

The development progressed along the same lines. 
Now that painting had discovered the poetry of the 
earthly, it could not remain where Jan van Eyck and 
Pisanello had left it. Their dainty, trifling miniature 
art had to be changed into serious painting, no longer 
confined to coloured surfaces, but which should discover 
the reality of things, and thus justify scientifically the 
existence of realism. In these further investigations 
the Netherlanders took no part. 

After the founders of the school had given such an 
important impulse by the perfection of oil painting, 
their followers confined themselves to working on in 
the style of the van Eycks. 

The works of Petrus Christus offer nothing not 
already contained in those of Jan. He appropriated 
the models of his master and the furniture of his studio, 
adopting whole figures of Jan's pictures in his own. 
As in the Frankfort Madonna he used Jan's Turkish 
carpet and the figures of Adam and Eve of the Ghent 
altar, so in the Madonna at Burleigh House he copied 
the Carthusian monk of the Rothschild Madonna. An 
interesting subject, because no similar work of Jan's 

' The pink, which had at that time just been introduced into Europe, 
created a similar sensation to that caused by the orchids in our own day. 

VOL. I. — 6 


So 14atuie an5 antiaue 

survives, is his St. Eligiiis at Cologne; it shows what 
worldly and purely pictorial points of view then deter- 
mined the choice of subjects. The artist desired to 
paint gleaming objects like golden tankards, beakers, 
necklaces, aigrettes, and wings; and as this could not 
yet be done in the form of pure still-life, he remembered 
good old Eligius, and placed him, purely as a matter 
of form, in the foreground. 

While he lived at The Hague Jan van Eyck may 
have also had a determinative influence upon con- 
temporary Dutch painting. At any rate Albert 
Ouwater's masterpiece, the Resurrection of Lazarus, is 
quite in the manner of his school. Like Jan he has 
placed the scene in a Romanesque cathedral, and the 
daintiness and repose of the figures, who are in no 
wise disturbed by the miracle, are equally reminiscent. 

Although Dirk Bouts is reputed to have improved 
upon Jan in landscape, his panels of the altar at 
Louvain indicate no progress from elaboration to 
greater intimacy. On the contrary, Bouts even adds 
details and piles the most arbitrary objects upon each 
other. It is curious to note how with him the spirit 
of realism led to the fantastic landscape. The artist 
felt that biblical scenes should not occur in the Nether- 
lands; and as he distinguished the figures as Orientals 
by turbans or other Eastern head-dresses and curious 
arms, so also he sought to give the landscape an exotic 
character. For Jan van Eyck, who had travelled 
widely, this was easy enough — he simply gave Portugal 


Ubc Jffrst IReaUsts 8i 

as the Orient; but Bouts, who had never left home, 
had to invent. As Holland was such a flat and level 
country, he thought the Orient must be mountainous; 
and he believed that by painting the opposite of what 
his home offered he could most correctly achieve the 
real character of biblical scenes. Another innovation 
by him is the endeavour to interpret certain effects 
of light. In contrast to Jan van Eyck, who painted 
everything in broad daylight, Bouts has in his St. 
Christopher depicted the background of the reddish 
light of the rising sun, while a ravine in the foreground 
is still enveloped in the darkness of night. In his 
Christ Taken Prisoner he has even attempted a 
problem not again ventured upon until it was at- 
tempted two centuries later by Elsheimer; while the 
background shows the pale light of the moon in a 
nightly sky, the figures are enveloped by the glare 
of torches. 

But even such achievements only indicate progress 
along the old path, and no diverging road. The ap- 
pearance of Jan van Eyck was so sudden, and so far 
did he reach into the future, that those who came 
after had quite enough to do to hold the field which 
he had conquered. It is true that in the Netherlands 
great personalities still appear who even enter into 
the drama of European art; but as they march alone, 
there is no co-ordination of labour or logical develop- 
ment of art. A real evolution of art during the fifteenth 
century exists only in Italy. 


82 IRature an& Bntlque 

1l1f. storm auD Stress tn jflorence 

In Florence, especially, all the conditions for the 
logical development were present. Here, where Cosmo 
de' Medici was at the head of the state, and where 
the Strozzi, Bardi, Rucellai, Tornabuoni, Pitti, and 
Pazzi sought, by the patronage of art, to emblazon 
recent coats of arms, there were such commissions for 
painting as were given nowhere else in the world. But 
Florence had also become the scientific centre of Italy, 
and the great scholars, anatomists, and mathematicians 
whom the Medici had summoned thither worked hand 
in hand with the artists. A scientific spirit pervaded 
art, the only spirit capable of solving all the purely 
technical problems which the century proposed. Sim- 
ply because in Florence artists laboured who, more 
as scholars than as artists, dedicated themselves with 
fanatic eagerness to the solution of the different prob- 
lems, and made it a life work to penetrate into the 
formative workshop of nature, could the painting of 
the quattrocento make such rapid progress. Only upon 
the foundation which these Florentine investigators had 
laid could the structure of modern painting arise. 

The first important problem was perspective — the 
problem with which the early period had most clumsily 
striven. Giotto always failed in attempting to divide 
his figures among several planes and to place them in 
correct relation to the buildings. With however much 
genius Masaccio solved the problem, he did so by 
arbitrarily following his own feelings. Such experi- 


storm ant) Stress In jf lorence 83 

ments had to be replaced by clear, scientific knowledge. 
As the correct proportions of the figures in space as well 
as the further development of landscape painting was 
only possible after the laws of perspective had been 
established, the foremost minds of the day proceeded 
to devote themselves to this subject. 

Brunellesco, the great architect, laid the foundation. 
Assisted by the mathematician Paolo Toscanelli, he 
established as the first principle that objects appear 
smaller in accordance with their distance from the eye, 
and offered the proof in a drawing of the piazza in front 
of the Baptistery. The way being thus paved, his 
conclusions were followed further. In his first book 
on painting, which was devoted mainly to the laws of 
perspective, Leon Battista Alberti put in writing all 
that had heretofore been orally transmitted, and in- 
vented the scheme of quadrates which enabled the 
artist to solve the most complicated problems with 
mathematical exactness. The origin of a special 
profession, that of the prospeUivista; the facts that, in 
the coloured incrustation of furniture, representations 
were for a long time popular which were nothing more 
than perspective paradigms, and that Ghiberti even 
treated reliefs as pictures with a background in per- 
spective — these are further examples of the importance 
which the quattrocento ascribed to the new science. 

Paolo Uccello used these achievements as a starting 
point in painting. According to Vasari, he received 
the appellation Uccello because, notwithstanding his 


84 IRature anb Bntique 

poverty, he possessed an entire menagerie, including 
a collection of rare birds. In his study of animals, so 
characteristic of the quattrocento, he is therefore related 
with Pisanello. His principal activity, however, con- 
sisted in the establishment, in connection with his 
friend the mathematician Manetti, of a system of the 
rules of perspective. 1 1 is touching to see a workman of 
this calibre becoming a fanatic over his problems, for- 
getting the whole world and brooding through whole 
nights over his investigations. What cares he for life 
or for painting! If it is in any wise possible he paints 
his pictures in monochrome, and if he must carry them 
out in colour, it is immaterial to him whether his horses 
are red or green. The life work which fate has decreed 
for him is only the solution of problems of perspective. 
Thus in his fresco of The Flood in the cloister of 
Santa Maria Novella, he does not paint the terrors of an 
inundation of the world, as any pupil of Giotto could 
have done; but he attempts the solution of problems 
which, chosen only for their difficulties, make the entire 
painting seem an illustration for a text-book of per- 
spective. In the pendant representing the Sacrifice 
oj Noah he causes a being supposed to represent God 
the Father to fall headlong from the clouds — for the 
sole purpose of determining how a person who had 
suddenly fallen from a scaffold would appear if he 
remained suspended in space. His battle-pieces, too, 
seem strange to the modern eye. The weirdly- 
coloured, thick-necked horses, rearing or lying stiff 


storm an& Stress in jf lorcnce 85 

upon the ground, resemble the horses of a merry-go- 
round more than real animals. 

But the word battle-piece calls to mind what a great 
revolution we now witness. The very fact that such 
profane objects could be painted reveals the seven- 
league strides of the time. When we reflect that Uccello 
had no predecessor in this field, and that what he 
attempted was not again taken up until Raphael and 
Titian did it in the sixteenth century and Salvator 
Rosa and Cerquozzi in the seventeenth, we cannot but 
recognise the historical importance of this keen and 
fanatic mind. No great conquest is accomplished at 
one blow, and it is more meritorious to attempt new 
problems than to imitate perfectly the traditional. It 
is due to such minds as Uccello's that Florentine 
painting did not remain stationary like the Nether- 
landish, but continued to ascend to new heights. With 
what astonishing fineness are the movements of these 
riders observed ! How clearly the different planes are 
separated, and with what botanical exactness the 
leaves and the oranges are drawn! With what pains he 
endeavours, with a Japanese sharpness of eye, to render 
all the branches and leaves in correct perspective! In 
reading his biography and studying his works one cannot 
but feel reverence for this zealot who prosecuted his 
study of perspective in leaves and branches with as 
much reverence as though it had been a holy service 
to God. 

His equestrian portrait of the condotiiere John 


86 IRature an& Bntique 

Hawkwood, in the cathedral of Florence, is also of 
epoch-making importance. The spirit of the Renais- 
sance and the equestrian statue — these involve almost 
the same idea. Equestrian statues must again, as in 
classical antiquity, be erected in public places; but 
plastic art was not yet capable of solving these prob- 
lems and painted statues had to suffice. In Uccello's 
fresco everything has a characteristic and monumental 
air. Donatello learned from him, when seventeen 
years later he created the statue of Gattamelata, 
and even Titian's Charles V. presupposes Uccello's 
Hawkwood, 
y The second problem was to furnish the new age with 
a new soul and a new body. In the middle ages men 
regarded themselves as a flock following the Good 
Shepherd, and art consequently did not recognise the 
individual and the particular. In the structure and 
position of the figures, as in their expression, a general 
and uniform type of beauty prevailed, which in the 
previous pages we have had ample occasion to examine. 
The fifteenth century, on the other hand, marks- the 
victory of individualism and the uncompromising 
prominence of the individual. An abundance of 
sharply outlined characters suddenly appears — robust, 
clear-cut personalities; lawless natures belonging just 
as much in the gallery of criminals as in that of great 
men. Character, individuality, power, and energy are 
the passwords of the age. This new humanity, all 
these rugged and manly figures which the age had 


storm an& Stress in 3f lorence 87 

created, had also to appear in painting. In contrast to 
the former preference for beauty of an angelic and 
tender type, the problem now was to depict energetic 
and powerful beings; and to replace the shy and 
feminine, though bearded, men in the pictures of the 
older masters by angular, harsh, determined, and daring 
types. The figures which had formerly hovered like 
spirits above the earth had now to stand firmly upon 
their own feet and become a part of their earthly home. 

But the sentimental as well as the external ideals of 
mankind had changed. Instead of humility and self- 
effacement shining from downcast eyes and transfigured 
features, rugged faces with furrowed brows appear. 
The whole menagerie of passions was let loose. As the 
tyrants of the quaitrocenio unreservedly followed the 
passion of the moment, whether it were sensuality or 
towering rage, art was now commanded to represent 
more powerful emotions than earlier painting had 
known; to depict flitting motion, changing gesture, 
and passion convulsively thrilling the human frame. 

Such problems were not even approached by Jan 
van Eyck and Pisanello. Although they had indeed 
painted the new costumes of their day, yet in their 
dainty manner of representation they remained Gothic. 
Their works have nothing of the rough breadth of the 
new age and its free demeanour, nothing of the depths 
of soul which suddenly appeared with such elementary 
power. Donatello was the first to give sculpture its 
new ideal; and it is characteristic how one extreme 


88 IRatuie anO Hntique 

followed the other. The standard of beauty was 
measured by the rudimentary and uncompromising 
representation of individual qualities. For thus may 
be best explained all the strange physiognomies which 
suddenly made their appearance in art: coarse men of 
the people with uncouth, overworked figures; peasants, 
with bones of bronze and pointed weather-beaten 
features; half-starved old beggars with flabby muscles 
and tottering bodies; neglected fellows with bald heads, 
stubbly beards, and long muscular arms. I n place of the 
former dainty pose, every line is now a sinew. Their 
firm, energetic attitude reflects the entire spirit of the 
rugged age of the condottieri; especially when, under 
the power of passion, the whole body is shaken as by 
convulsions. In his endeavour to render drastic ex- 
pression Donatello occasionally descends to grimaces, 
and it is no accident that he so loves the figures of 
Magdalen and John the Baptist. For in these figures 
all is united that the time demanded: a body upon 
which hunger and self-denial have left their hideous 
mark; a withered skeleton, held together by the leathery 
skin alone, and convulsed by tearful woe and fiery, 
ecstatic pathos. 

The Donatello of painting is Andrea del Castagno, a 
keen and fearless spirit, who hesitates at no brutality 
or exaggeration which lends character to his figures. 
Like Donatello he loves revolting physiognomies, wild 
men of the desert, and starving ascetics, whose mighty 
and powerful features, consumed by an awfully intensi- 


storm an5 Stress in ^Florence 89 

fied life, nevertheless create an indelible impression. 
Like Donatello, he combines with keenness of facial 
expression mighty statuesque power. His Cruci- 
fixion in Santa Maria Novella is a marvel of pathetic 
expression; particularly the figure of Mary, a harsh and 
embittered matron, whose entire body is bowed in 
suffering. In his Last Supper in Sant' Apollonia 
every figure has a character of rigid severity— that con- 
centrated fulness of life expressed in Donatello's statues 
of the Campanile. One lingers before his Pieta in 
Berlin because of its grandiose, heroic ugliness. His 
Magdalen and the two Johns in Santa Croce find 
their equal only in the ascetic figures of the great con- 
temporary sculptor. 

By dint of sheer realism he sometimes attains a 
mighty, kingly style. His equestrian portrait of 
Niccolo da Tolentino, the pendant of Uccello's Hawk- 
wood in the cathedral, is of a defiant and monumental 
grandeur, and the portraits of Dante, Petrarca, and 
Boccaccio, as well as those of Acciajuolo, Uberti, and 
Pippo Spano, all of which he painted for Villa Pandol- 
fini, are most impressive in their mighty, heroic power. 
Pippo Spano especially, standing, his sword in hand, 
with legs spread apart, seems the spirit incarnate of the 
quaUrocento—tha.t elemental age, equally great in art 
and in passion. Terribile — that much misused word — 
is certainly appropriate for Castagno. He is the king 
of the lawless age which piled up the unhewn stones of 
the Pitti Palace. 


90 IWature an& Hntique 

The third subject requiring study was the problem of 
•^colour. Accustomed to fresco painting artists had de- 
voted little attention to the technique of panels, and 
were therefore far from having achieved the luminous 
colouring of the Flemish pictures that had found their 
way to Italy. To fill this deficiency was the lot of an 
artist who came from the city in which the greatest 
triumphs of colour in later Italian art were celebrated — 
from Venice. Domenico Veneziano, who had seen 
Pisanello's frescoes arise in the Ducal Palace, had then 
followed him to Rome, and had finally settled in 
Florence, is reputed to have been the first man who 
experimented with colours, independent of the Nether- 
landers. ^ Although his panels are painted in tempera 
they are characterised by a peculiar brilliancy and 
shimmer and a soft enamel-like effect. We are con- 
fronted by the interesting fact that a Venetian, who had 
evidently acquired the colour sense at home, attempted, 
as early as the first half of the fifteenth century, and 
in severe, plastic Florence, to solve the same problems 
which did not again occupy Venetian painters until the 
days of Bellini. 

Even in sentiment the Venetian is recognisable. 

' In common with other German writers, Professor Muther uses the 
terms Netherlands and Netherlanders for the Low Countries and their 
inhabitants during this epoch. Their art is more properly termed 
Netherlandish than Flemish, since it was common to both the Dutch 
and the Flemish provinces. Not until the sixteenth century did it 
differentiate in consequence of their separation, and we may then more 
properly speak of Flemish and Dutch art than during the earlier period. 
—Ed. 


storm anD Stress In Florence 91 

The harsh, realistic traits which obtrude in Domenico's 
altar-pieces should not mislead us into considering him 
an unbridled naturalist in the sense Castagno was. 
The relation between these two artists was one of 
mutual giving and taking. The impressions which 
Castagno received from Domenico are expressed in his 
occasional experiments with colour in such paintings as 
the Crucifixion; it is even related that he killed 
Domenico on account of envy at his success as a 
colourist. Domenico, on the other hand, assumed the 
garb of Castagno when he painted Sts. John and 
Francis in Santa Croce. As a matter of fact this 
rugged rusticity was little in accordance with his 
nature. He was the first after Pisanello to paint 
portraits — those profile heads in which the evolution 
of the portrait from the medal can be so clearly fol- 
lowed. His subjects are all young girls. In his 
portrait of the little Bardi maiden (Museo Poldi- 
Pezzoli, Milan), he has depicted with loving tenderness 
the charming lines of the arch profile and dainty neck, 
the eye with free, childish glance and the blond hair 
adorned with pearls. At a time when other portrait 
painters were only in their element when giving the 
facsimilies of old wrinkled faces and characteristic 
ugliness, he could thus render the budlike freshness of 
maidenhood with finely felt grace. The same young 
woman, only a few years later, may be seen in a profile 
portrait of the Berlin Gallery: in the one instance a 
shy fiancee fresh from school, in the other a more 


02 "Wature anb Hntique 

developed young wife. As several other portraits of 
young women ascribed in the diflferent galleries to other 
artists are probably the work of Domenico, he may be 
characterised as feminine in the midst of virile Floren- 
tine art, and so the first artist who realised the grace of 
youth and the charm of tender womanhood. Thus 
did Venice, whose later art developed into a hymn to 
womanhood, produce even at the beginning of the 
fifteenth century the first portraitist of girls. 

Such active minds wrestling with great problems 
were of course not in a position to supply the entire 
artistic needs of their day. The eclaireurs, therefore, 
were accompanied by the profiteurs, the investigators 
by those who popularised their ideas. The former did 
not dissipate their efforts or attempt activity in 
different fields, but laid down the results of their in- 
vestigation in a few works every one of which meant 
a conquest. The latter attempted to achieve breadth 
instead of depth. With the aid of the technical in- 
struments which others had forged, they set out to 
conquer the world. The whole fulness of life entered 
into art; and the history of the civiHsation of the age 
is recorded in its paintings. 

Fra Filippo, especially, and Gozzoli became the 
chroniclers of their epoch: careless, versatile minds, 
who, without troubling themselves over scientific 
problems, plunged with a joyous quiver in the stream 
of worldly events. By their position in life and educa- 
tion, both had been called to hold aloft the banner of 


i 


Storm anb Stress in 3f lorence 93 

the old religious painting; for one was a friar, the other 
the favourite pupil of the blessed brother of San Marco, 
But how little religious feeling remains in their works! 

Even as an individual, Fra Filippo is an interesting 
type of the day. Although only eight years younger 
than Fiesole, he was as different from him as a gallant 
abbe from a saintly hermit. In his quiet cloister Fra 
Giovanni knew nothing of the temptations of life or of 
the love of woman; but Filippo was of "such a loving 
nature that he would have given all his possessions 
for women." In order to seek an adventure he would 
leave his workshop and work for days. When confined 
in his convent he made a rope out of the bedclothes 
in order to escape through the window upon a nightly 
expedition. 1 He eloped with Lucrezia Buti, a pretty 
nun of Prato, and Spinetta, her younger sister, also 
fled to the home of the jolly couple. When Cosmo de' 
Medici heard of these scrapes, he only "laughed 
heartily over them." 

These performances, although indifi'erent as anec- 
dotes, illumine the joyful and worldly character of the 
age, and explain why the pictures of Fra Filippo have 
so little in common with Fiesole's. Only in several of 
his youthful works, as in the delicate Adoration of 
the Christ-child, in Berlin, is there a breath of that 
heavenly love which Fra Angelico painted. The sub- 

^ According to Vasari, in the story whicii Browning followed in his 
famous poem, and from which the author's version is derived, Filippo 
was confined in the house of Cosimo de' IVledici, who thus sought to 
keep the roving friar out of mischief. — Ed. 


94 IRature anD Bntique 

ject of the painting, its light, rosy colour and the soft 
flow of the draperies, betray a connection with the older 
art. He even became a fresh narrator, gazing with 
sensual glance into life, and portraying in his paintings 
sprightly maidens and women with nothing holy about 
them. His Coronation of the Virgin rivals the 
beauty of a harem, in the charming maidens who 
are kneeling, their hair crowned with rose wreathes, 
and carrying flowering, long-stemmed lilies in their 
hands. In his paintings of Madonnas everything 
solemn and representative is eliminated. The lowly 
Virgin has become a blooming Florentine woman who 
devotes much attention to the toilette. He clothes 
her with gold-seamed garments, drapes her with scarfs 
and jewellery, and arranges her lace collar with the 
choice taste of a man who is an authority upon such 
things. Of course, with the principal figure the sur- 
roundings also change. Mary is no longer enthroned or 
surrounded by saints, but sits in her home or in a 
garden. Even in his frescoes at Prato depicting the 
life of the Baptist and of St. Stephen, he remains an 
admirer of women. In this cycle he occasionally at- 
tempts a serious, solemn style; but he certainly took 
most pleasure in the picture which represented Herod's 
Banquet with Salome dancing. A Dinner with the 
Medici would have been a more suitable title. " Fra 
Filippo was very partial to men of cheerful character, 
and Hved for his own part in a very joyous fashion": 
thus Vasari characterised him, and the artist certainly 



5 

5 


z 

o 

z 

o 
« 
o 
o 


tto 

•o 


V 


t3 


im>j^ 


storm an^ Stress In J'lorence 95 

resembled the man. It would be vain to seek depth 
or grandeur in his works. As the son of a butcher, he 
passed his life among rather elementary feelings; but his 
wholesomeness and good nature, his harmless epicu- 
reanism, and fine feeling for feminine beauty make 
him a true son of this joyful and happy age. 

Benozzo Gozzoli experienced a similar artistic de- 
velopment. When in his youth he painted the delight- 
ful woodland story of the Journey of the Three Kings 
in the Palazzo Medici, he was still the dainty pupil of 
Angelico, and although he had fallen in love with the 
springtime, he had not yet forgotten heaven. He does 
not merely relate a novel of Florentine life; for groups 
of angels of captivating beauty terminate, on either 
side, this fresh and lovable work. Afterwards this 
dreamy tendency disappears. The lyric poet no longer 
survives and the narrator alone speaks in the celebrated 
cycles of San Gimignano and Pisa, which under biblical 
titles illustrate the whole life of the quattrocento. In 
the former cycle, which represents the Life of St. 
Augustine, one picture is particularly celebrated, 
because it gives information in regard to instruction 
in the schools of the fifteenth century. In the Pisan 
cycle, which treats subjects from the Old Testament, 
there is a veritable history of Florentine manners; the 
Legend of Noah is transformed into a Florentine 
vintage and the Building of the Tower of Babel 
affords an opportunity to depict the confused action 
of a building site, in which Cosmo de' Medici, accom- 

VOL. I.— 7 


96 IWature au^ Hntiquc 

panied by his friends, views the structure. There is 
nothing of the thunder of the prophets or of the bloody 
wrath of Jehovah; but he relates contemporary wars, 
the foundation of cities, and the pleasures of country 
life. He knows as little of artistic subtleties or of mod- 
ern problems as the Giotteschi who laboured in the 
Camposanto before him. But his bubbling narrative 
talent and facility of execution are most astonishing. 
Minarets, obelisks, triumphal columns, palaces, gardens 
and vineyards, people of every age and condition, 
animals and flowers — all these he weaves into bright 
garlands. To improve and convert is as far from his 
purpose as possible; his only aim is to entertain, chat 
superficially, and record the chronicles of his age. 

Hirif. piero Delia jfranceeca 

As the activity of the Florentine masters had not 
been confined to their native city, but had spread 
throughout Tuscany, it was not long before the 
spirit of realism took root elsewhere. Prato, the 
coquettish little city in the plain of the Arno, Em- 
poli, and Pistoja, summoned Florentine masters; in 
Pisa the time-honoured cradle of mediaeval painting, 
the new works of Gozzoli arose; in San Gimignano, 
in the picturesque mountain town of Arezzo, in Borgo 
San Sepolcro, and Cortona — everywhere Florentine 
painters were active. 

By this means realistic art was carried into these 
distant provinces. There, too, the painters were no 


piero 5ella jfcancesca 97 

longer willing to listen to the melodies of centuries gone 
by, as Gentile had done. Forgetting the ancient 
churchly ideals, they contended with their Florentine 
associates in the difficult labour of investigation. The 
dreamers who had lived so completely apart from the 
world were followed by calm and clear observers. 
Indeed, the artist with whom the realistic movement 
in Umbria began, Piero della Francesca, is the greatest 
of those searching minds whose scientific experiments 
created the grammar of modern painting, and who at- 
tempted problems which have occupied the world even 
until our own day. 

Scarcely twenty years have passed since Impression- 
ism entered the artistic activity of the present day. 
The problem was to represent objects in their atmos- 
pheric veil, enveloped by light and air; it was not to 
paint local colours, but the effects of light under which 
every object momentarily changes colour. The activ- 
ity of Piero della Francesca confirms the old saying 
of Ben Akiba.i Four hundred years ago he proposed 
the problem of realism, and endeavoured as the fore- 
runner of the most modern artists to establish in what 
manner atmosphere changes colour impressions. 

The conditions then were very much the same as in 
our own day. The consciousness had gradually arisen 
that there was a contradiction between the sharp out- 

• A rabbi in Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta, whose favourite expression 
was, "Allesschon dagewesen"— there is nothing new under the sun. 
—Ed. 


98 "Hature an& Bntique 

lines and bright glistening colours of the van Eycks 
and Pisanello and what the eye actually sees; for ob- 
jects do not glisten in nature as Jan painted them on the 
Ghent altar. Yet another problem arose. Earlier art- 
ists, whose eyes lingered upon details, were not capable 
of rendering wide and distant views. Their perspec- 
tive knowledge only permitted them to indicate the 
recession of planes by means of hills and curtains. As 
they were not able to paint the broad heaven which 
lies above the plane, they avoided attempting it. The 
landscape rises almost vertically to two thirds of the 
height of the picture, and often indeed the ascending 
surface is given without attempting to render the sky. 
The picture is the representation of a flat surface, and 
does not create the impression of depth. 

By reason of his origin, Piero was called to offer a 
successful solution of these problems. The little town 
of Borgo San Sepolcro, where, in 1420, he was born, lies 
in the midst of the Umbrian plain. While artists who 
laboured in densely populated and closely built cities 
were accustomed, with sharp eye, to observe things 
from near by, Piero, standing on the hill of his native 
town, saw only light and space. He saw the sun as it 
brooded over the valley and bathed objects, now in the 
splendour of the morning, now in the quivering light of 
noon, now in the soft twilight. Narrowed by no limit, 
his eye swept over numberless hills into infinite space. 
The two problems of space and light, therefore, became 
the great objects of his life. 


Ipiero &ena jfrancesca 99 

The Florentines had also approached both, Uccello 
endeavoured by lines in perspective to av/aken the feel- 
ing of depth; Castagno was fond of placing his fig- 
ures in a niche in order to attain the impression of a 
plastic object in space, and Domenico Veneziano at- 
tempted to interpret the gleaming shimmer of objects. 
When Piero, in 1438, came to Florence with Domenico, 
after the latter's employment in Perugia, he saw the 
works of all these masters. What he had felt in his 
home became the object of scientific research. An 
Umbrian gathered the threads together in his hand, 
and solved the problem which the Florentines had 
laboriously attempted. The country in which St. 
Francis had written his hymn to the sun bestowed 
upon the world the first painter of light. 

Even in his earliest work, the altar of the Miseri- 
cordia, which is still preserved in the hospital of Borgo, 
both problems are announced. The style is as new 
as the subject is mediaeval. While earlier artists had 
laboured rather in the style of relief and upon flat 
surfaces, Piero, in order to create the impression of 
spacious depth, represents the mantle of the Madonna 
as a hollow, cubic space, in which the kneeling figures 
are arranged in circular form. In contrast with earlier 
paintings, which reveal only broken local colours, the 
inner side of the mantle which Mary spreads over the 
believers refracts and reflects the colour in accordance 
with the light that sweeps over it. In his next picture, 
the fresco in San Francesco at Rimini, representing the 


100 IRature an^ Bntique 

lord of the city, Sigismondo Malatesta, a celebrated 
condoiiiere, kneeling before his patron saint, Piero has 
transferred these principles to landscape; the wall is 
broken open and the Duke is seen kneeling in an open 
space, which, pervaded by delicate light, stretches into 
the infinite. In order to heighten the impression of 
infinite space, he has erected in the foreground, like a 
mighty screen, a Renaissance column; that is to say, in 
order to direct the eye into the depth, he used the same 
artifice afterwards employed by Claude Lorrain. The 
two portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino are 
also significant of these tendencies. While Pisanello 
and Domenico Veneziano had preserved, in their por- 
traits, the severe style of ancient medals, Piero, in his 
tendency to attain the impression of depth, broke with 
this point of view. A wide landscape with well tilled 
acres, hills and valleys, representing the blessings of 
good government, stretches out. The blue back- 
ground is no longer that of a medal, but the sky stretch- 
ing brightly over the fields. Instead of painted reliefs 
the figures have the effect of bodies in space. It is 
true that he did not solve the problem perfectly. His 
insistence upon the rigid profile causes a dissonance 
between the spacious effect of the background and the 
flat, constrained style of the heads. But he has made 
the beginning for the substitution of really painted 
portraits in place of painted medals. 

>While in these works he competes successfully with 
his Florentine colleagues, in a series of others he has 


piero bella jfrancesca loi 

taken over the ancient inheritance of the Umbrians, the 
sense for feminine charm, into the new period. For 
there hardly exists a more tender picture than his 
Madonna, in Oxford, who, pale and emaciated, with 
irregular but distinguished features, bends so silently 
to the Christ-child. In his Birth of Christ, in Lon- 
don, the scientific problem is, as usual, most promi- 
nent. In order to attain the impression of spacious 
depth he causes the roof of the hut to descend in keen 
foreshortening, so that one feels that the figures really 
stand in space; and on both sides he directs the view 
to the landscape which, just because the scene in the 
foreground is pushed forward, seems the more distant 
and infinite in effect. In like manner he proposes a 
fixed problem of light, the interpretation of the silvery 
gleam of moonlight. Pale, blue light fills the room, 
quivers in greyish beams through the hut, and bathes 
the landscape of the background a bluish mist. But 
the eye lingers with rapture upon the beautiful angels 
who have come down from heaven to greet the Madonna 
with song and with the music of mandolin and viol. 
They are very wonderful and of a captivating modern 
beauty, reminding one of Rossetti — these budding 
maidens in gay costumes like those of an operetta, 
with their wavy locks and gleaming necklaces. 

The frescoes of the History of the Holy Cross, upon 
which he was engaged in the Church of San Francesco in 
Arezzo until 1466, show him at the height of his ability. 
All the problems which he had adopted from the 


/' 


I02 Iftature au^ Bntique 

Florentines are here solved in classic perfection. While 
Uccello's battle-pieces do not progress beyond au- 
tomatic stiffness, Piero's pictures are perfected results of 
modern battle painting. Castagno had laboured to 
acquire the third dimension, but with Piero the surface 
that he had to paint resolves itself without effort into 
space. Although Domenico Veneziano was the first 
to render the effects of light, Piero transformed all 
nature into a world of values which were determined 
by the all-ruling factor of light. In his Adam and Eve 
Masaccio was the first to approach the problem of the 
nude; but Piero renders scenes — especially nude men 
seen from behind — which seem to have been taken from 
the works of Klinger. 

The psychological aspect of his work is no less re- 
markable than the technical. In representing the 
History of the Holy Cross, he actually gives the 
history of the Tree of Life which Seth, the son of Adam, 
planted: the history of the tree trunk, the wood of 
which served as a bridge, then as the threshold of the 
Temple, which once lay at the bottom of the sea, then 
in the depths of the earth; and which, although the 
Nazarene was crucified upon it, still preserves its 
indestructible power. The introductory picture, in 
which the dying Adam gives the command to plant the 
tree, contains the master's philosophy. He sits there, 
aged and tired; the power of primitive man has left his 
sickly limbs. Beside him stands Eve supported by a 
crutch, her face wrinkled and her breasts withered. 


PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA 



THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 

National Gallery, London 


piero ^eUa francesca 103 

This group, however, is balanced on the other side by 

a powerful young man, strong as an athlete, and beside 

him a buxom lass whose full breasts protrude from her 

clothing. It is the contrast of age and youth, of decline 

and power, of death and of ever renewing procreation 

referred to by the Earth Spirit in Goethe's Faust — 

"Geburt iind Grab, 
Ein ewiges Meer, 
Ein wechselnd Weben, 
Ein gliihend Leben." 

Piero resembles the Earth Spirit. What Millet called 
"le cri de la terre" resounds through his works. He 
knows no heaven, but only the fruitful all-supporting 
earth. The grain ripens, the soil of fertile acres steams, 
and waving fields of grain stretch before us. Man, 
bound fast to the soil and hard pressed, leads upon 
this earth a great animal life. For Piero the world is 
no longer a station on the road to heaven. He is the 
son of the soil, made of the earth, to which he will 
again return. He loves the workman, leaning on his 
spade; the tiller of the soil, who makes it tributary and 
fruitful. He is also attracted by Nubian types, because 
these primitive men have something earthly and vege- 
tating about them. His women resemble nurses who 
only live to give life to new generations. In contrast 
to the figures of Gentile gazing longingly towards 
heaven, an Umbrian peasant now proclaims a new 
gospel: that there is no immortality after death, 
but only the withering and the budding, the eternal 
process of creation in nature, is immortal. 


104 Bature ant) Bntiaue 

The Madonna del Parto, which after the com- 
pletion of the frescoes of Arezzo he painted for the 
mortuary chapel of the mountain town Ville Monterchi, 
is perhaps his most representative work. Angels draw 
back a curtain, revealing a woman placing, with 
monumental gesture, her hand on her consecrated 
body. Here he has painted the symbol of life; for the 
Madonna is not the Blessed Virgin, but Cybele, the 
primeval mother of the race of man, the incarnation of 
Zola's La Terre. Nor is there any death or resurrection 
of existence for him. As in the frescoes at Arezzo he 
had avoided representing the Crucifixion, although the 
theme demanded it, so at San Sepolcro he paints not 
the crucified but the risen Christ. Motionless as if a 
part of the soil, the sleeping guards lie before the sarco- 
phagus, and with solemn dignity the Earth Spirit, 
superhumanly powerful, rises from the dark shaft. 
Some of the trees are dead and bare; but on others a 
new and succulent green begins to sprout. 

His later works are onlyfurther paradigms of his prin- 
ciples. A flaring daylight lies over the Baptism of 
Christ, in the National Gallery (London). The body of 
Christ is not flesh-coloured, but the light falling through 
the treetops plays upon the skin with greenish reflec- 
tions. The figures do not stand in front of the landscape, 
but grow out of it mighty as statues. The trees meet- 
ing above the scene are pomegranates, the symbol of 
fertility. As angels, the fresh, saucy maidens of the 
Birth oj Christ, with green wreaths and red and 


TTbe Ibarbinoers of tbe Storm 105 

white roses in their fair hair, have returned. In the 
picture of the Brera in which Federigo of Urbino kneels 
before the Madonna, he has painted the latter's wife, 
Battista Sforza, as the Madonna, and her son, the Httle 
Guidobaldo, as the Christ-child; the view opens into 
the apse of the church in which the figures are ar- 
ranged cubically in a hollow space. In the Madonna di 
Sinigaglia he attempts the favourite problem of Pieter 
de Hoog in showing how the light from a window, 
flooding into a room, vibrates more dimly in one place 
and more brightly in another. The love of still-life 
revealed in this painting led him to paint pictures with- 
out figures, representing wide squares enlivened by 
festive Renaissance buildings; and thus architectural 
painting took its place in Italian art. It is true that in 
these last works a yellowish-green mist has taken the 
place of the clear, bright colours he had formerly loved. 
It announced his disease of the eye — a strange irony 
of fate that just the man who had seen so much 
light was finally blinded. 

IFV). Zbz Ibarbingers ot tbe Storm. 

All these pictures seem separated by many de- 
cades from those of Gentile and Fiesole. Every 
vestige of the mediaeval feeling has died away, and 
all traces of religious devotion have been elimi- 
nated. Some treat subjects only to solve technical 
problems. With what a mocking shrug of the shoulders 
they must have looked upon Fiesole, seeing in his piety 


io6 IRature a»\D Bnttque 

nothing but a melodramatic concession to the public. 
Others, while they did not change painting into science, 
nevertheless translated the whole Bible into a worldly 
language, using all scriptural subjects as a pretext 
for pictures of manners and fashions. That painting 
should be a handmaiden of religion and satisfy certain 
psychic needs seemed to them an exploded theory. 

It is a question whether this art could have remained 
permanently dominant. However worldly-minded the 
upper classes may have been, and however proudly 
painters may have followed the programme of art for 
art's sake, there was also a people who demanded other 
nourishment from art, who wished to be moved, and 
sought edification and comfort in pictures. Thus it 
came to pass that about the middle of the century a 
popular art appeared, in direct opposition to worldly 
and scientific painting. Among the people themselves, 
suppressed and grudging, a religious reaction was pre- 
paring. Although Roger van der Weyden and Fie- 
sole are separated by only a few years, one was the 
end, the other the beginning of an epoch. The art of 
the former is no longer of the soft yet rather thought- 
less and phlegmatic piety of the middle age, but the 
thunder preceding the storm; an earthquake that con- 
vulsed the nations. 

This is not true of all the master's paintings, for at 
the end of his life he became even soft and conciliatory. 
In his last works, the Middelburg altar-piece and St. 
Luke, he is almost reconciled in character and in 


TTbe (barbinaers of tbc Storm 107 

execution with the school of van Eyck, gentle and quiet 
in feeling, delicate and detailed in landscape. If 
another work ascribed to him in the Munich Gallery, 
the altar-piece of the Three Kings, is really by him and 
not by MemHng, it might be said that in his latest 
period he achieved an almost courtly delicacy of 
execution. The costumes are smart and elegant, the 
movements pleasing and courteous. The bit of land- 
scape in the background — showing Memling's rider on 
a white horse approaching by a lonely road — would 
even stamp him as the first painter of paysage intime 
in the Netherlands. 

But it is not of such elegant works that we think when 
Roger's name is mentioned. One recalls great, wide- 
open eyes, tears streaming down emaciated cheeks, 
hands convulsively clasped or with stiff fingers 
stretched to heaven; one thinks of wailing and of wild 
anguish. 

Jan van Eyck was not concerned with the suffering 
and heavy-laden; he appealed only to the wealthier 
classes, who demanded of art a feast for the eye but 
no psychic emotion. With him everything is gay and 
bright; the flowers bloom, clothes glimmer, and a 
joyous Easter feeling pervades the world. 

When Roger, the city painter of Brussels, spoke to 
the people, he spoke in words of thunder, like an im- 
passioned prophet of the Old Testament. His only 
theme is the suffering of the Saviour. Emaciated 
people with staring, tear-stained eyes stand sobbing 


io8 IRatiire an& Bnticiue 

and wailing about the cross; Mary sinks unconscious to 
the earth, and the apostles cry to heaven in wildest 
despair. Or he paints the Madonna seated, a grief- 
stricken matron, as if petrified by pain, and holding in 
her lap the wounded and emaciated corpse of her Son. 
In another painting the heaven has opened and Christ 
calls the blessed to him, consigning the damned to 
eternal tortures. In so far as he does not revert 
to the mediaeval gold background, he even draws the 
landscape into the struggle of passion. Abrupt and 
jagged cliffs arise from dismal chasms, and all nature 
seems petrified when the rigid body of the Redeemer 
is interred. 

As we of the present are no longer familiar with such 
passions, much about Roger's pictures seems forced 
and the outbursts of pain impress us as grimaces. 
But if we reflect with what theatrical hollowness later 
artists painted the same theme, we cannot but feel 
the elemental force and the primeval power of these 
works. It seems as if no single man, but the people 
itself, had created them. As in Roman times it had 
once demanded panem ei circenses, it now cried for 
religion, not begging but threatening and prepared 
for a revolt. Roger was the interpreter of this senti- 
ment of the age. Never before and seldom since then 
has painting spoken in such tragic, convulsing tones. 
This explains the tremendous effects of his work, which 
may be likened to an avalanche rolling over the 
countries. 


ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN 



BEWAILING OF THE BODY OF CHRIST 

Berlin Gallery 


i 


XLbc "ffjarbinocrs of tbe Stonn 109 

For Roger's influence was not confined to the north. 
The journey which as a pious man he made in order to 
celebrate the jubilee of 1450 in the Eternal City, was 
also an event for Italian art. From Cosmo de' Medici 
he received a commission for that altar-piece with the 
Medicean patron saints, which now hangs in Frankfort. 
This shows that in Italy also there existed religious 
needs for which the scientific and worldly painting was 
not sufficient. It would be interesting to know what 
external event caused this sudden flaming up of the 
religious spirit. Did St. Anthony of Padua, who was 
at that time preaching, bring about the revolution? 
It is very remarkable that the aged Donatello, who had 
become a classicist while at Rome, suddenly changed 
into a wild and impassioned Baroque master. A shrill 
cry of despair seems to echo through his works at Padua, 
and it is noteworthy that the school of that city as- 
sumed the same tone. 

For all such pictures as Gregorio Schiavone and 
Marco Zoppo painted have nothing in common with the 
superficial worldliness of Fra Filippo and Gozzoli, but 
are products of the same spirit which dominates 
Donatello's reliefs and Roger's Pieia, Earnest, un- 
approachable, and almost haughty, the Madonna sits 
on her marble throne, with saints of bony harshness and 
gloomy, threatening expression gathering about her. 
The world is dead; the eye sees no sprouting and 
budding, no flowers and perfume, but naked cliffs and 
gloomy caves. Bare and robbed of their foliage, the 


no IRature an5 Bntique 

trees, as if freezing, stretch their withered branches 
towards heaven. Men, too, were freezing; they longed 
again for the warming rays of the hght of heaven. A 
harsh, frosty and ascetic spirit, as if of the north, 
pervades these works. 

The same spirit is even more prevalent in the product 
of the school of Ferrara. The very soil of this city is 
more northern than Italian. A flat plain, monotonous 
and dreary, stretches out like a mighty solemn Nirvana, 
filling the human spirit with religious stupor. The eye 
sees only little fields separated by crippled, leafless 
mulberry trees, among which scraggy grape-vines 
climb. Solemn and crude, defiant and gloomy, the 
Palazzo Schifanoja towers aloft, behind whose red 
brick walls the bloody tragedies recounted by Byron 
occurred. The streets are sober-looking and straight, 
and are flanked by palaces built of dark brick in the 
same severe and gloomy style. 

It is easy to understand how Roger van der Weyden, 
on his road to Rome, found an appreciative reception 
in this serious northern town. Lionello d'Este, the 
friend of Pisanello, ordered from him that triptych of 
the Descent from the Cross, the central panel of 
which now hangs in the Ufifizi. Indeed Roger's harsh, 
angular art had a determinative effect upon the 
character of Ferrarese painters. From Squarcione, 
in whose studio at Padua they received their education, 
they acquired technique, and from Piero della Fran- 
cesca, who had been employed for some time at the 


TLbc Ibarbinoers ot tbe Storm m 

court of Lioncllo, they derived their preference for 
light grey values of colour and for wide extensive land- 
scapes from which the figures arise like statues. 
Roger van der Weyden added an especially harsh note, 
that of Netherlandish ascetisicm. 

The joint work of the school, the cycle of frescoes 
in the Palazzo Schifanoja, is characteristic of the 
mediaeval spirit of Ferrarese art. The theme of the 
Twelve Months affords the opportunity of portraying, 
besides political events, the labour of the field and the 
pleasures of the hunt. The representation of March 
by women spinning in the midst of a landscape is 
especially important as the first picture of labour in 
the history of art. By the same artist, Francesco 
Cossa, is an Autumn, in the Berlin Gallery, which 
has made his name one of the best known of the quat- 
trocento: a peasant woman in tucked-up dress, with 
spade and hoe in hand and a cluster of ripe grapes over 
her shoulder, stands in the midst of the field; a proud 
picture of labour, lonely as a mighty statue, with her 
eyes turned to her native village. The "scent of the 
earth," as we perceive it in the works of Piero della 
Francesca, seems to stream from this work. It must 
not, however, be forgotten that the Ferrarese still 
maintained more intimate relations with the middle 
age than their contemporaries. While the Florentines 
narrate in a worldly manner, the Ferrarese reach back 
to mediaeval allegory. For Autumn is one of those 
"pictures of the months" which occur in mediaeval 

VOL. I.— 8 


112 


IHature anD antique 


calendars, and the entire Schifanoja frescoes treat the 
mediaeval theme, that the course of the stars determines 
the fate of men. 

Besides these allegories practically the only other 
works in Ferrarese painting are such as treat with 
ascetic severity and almost grimacing pathos the 
theme of the Bewailing of the Body of Christ or the 
Madonna Enthroned. Thin, ugly, aged figures, bony 
old men and careworn matrons, dominate almost ex- 
clusively the repertoire of Ferrarese art. No other 
Italian school stands as near to the naturalism of 
Roger; no other took such delight in harsh and 
disagreeable lines, callous hands and emaciated bodies 
quaking as if from the fever. But it is just to this 
one-sidedness that its works owe their mighty and 
characteristic greatness. The colour, the harsh juxta- 
position of lemon yellow, blue, and vermilion, even 
heightens the harsh and solemn effect. 

In its wild barbaric pathos, the Pietd of Cosimo 
Tura in the Louvre has a grandiose effect, and his 
Madonna in Berlin glitters like Byzantine mosaic. 
Her throne, adorned with gilded bronze reliefs and 
glittering mosaics, rests upon columns of crystal, and 
her garments gleam in emerald, scarlet, and yellow; 
while the stiff, ascetic, and bony saints have the effect 
of mighty statues. Even Ercole dei Roberti, although 
belonging to the younger generation, has the same 
rugged and archaic style. In describing his passion 
scenes in San Petronio at Bologna, Vasari could speak 


/IDante^na 113 

only of Mary sinking into unconsciousness and of 
weeping faces, disfigured by pain. His best known 
work in Germany is the John the Baptist in the 
Berlin Gallery — a skeleton arising like a statue from a 
reddish, solemn landscape. In the presence of such 
paintings one feels the announcement of a spiritual 
tendency to which the future would belong, and sees, 
approaching at a distance, the man who was called to 
be the Luther of Italy. But the time was not yet 
ripe; for another power, the antique, was as yet stronger 
than Christianity. 

ID. flbantegna 

Up to this time the antique had exercised but little 
influence upon the artistic activity of the quattro- 
cento. The word " Renaissance " in the sense of a 
revival of antiquity would be more suitable for the 
trecento. At the time when Petrarca, the youth- 
ful enthusiast, set out to make known the buried 
treasures of the pagan world; when Cola di Rienzi 
dreamed of restoring the greatness of ancient Rome, and 
when Boccaccio wrote his Genealogia Deorum and those 
lightly-clad novels in which a thoroughly heathen 
spirit dallies and jests— at that time art also experienced 
an antique Renaissance. It was the age of the bap- 
tistery and the church of San Miniato in Florence, of 
the cathedral, the baptistery, and the leaning tower 
in Pisa — all works of the Romanesque style, after an- 
tique models and of an almost Hellenic purity. In 


114 mature an& Bntique 

close imitation of the antique the Pisani carved their 
sculptures, and in the domain of painting Giotto filled 
the antique forms with new life and animated their 
serious outlines with Christian content. At hardly 
any other time was Christian art so permeated by 
antique elements as when the master of the Triumph 
of Death painted his nude putti at Pisa, and Loren- 
zetti created those frescoes in which many a figure 
seems to have been taken directly from Pompeian 
mural paintings. 

In contrast to this the antique plays a more modest 
part in the earlier art of the quattrocento. The advice 
given by Leonbattista Alberti to the artist, to substitute 
for antique forms an independent study of natural ones, 
clearly indicates the change. The only thing adopted 
from the trecento was the delight taken in antique 
accessories. As in Giotto's pictures the column of 
Trajan, the temple of Minerva at Assisi, the horses of 
St. Mark's, and Victories bearing palms occur, so now 
paintings fairly abound in antique buildings and orna- 
ments. Even before architecture had taken the new 
path, painters used architectural backgrounds of an 
antique character and scattered a profusion of palmettes 
and rosettes, sphinxes and satyrs, cornucopias and 
meanders, garlands and triglyphs, candelabra and urns, 
sirens and trophies to attain a pleasing surface decora- 
tion. Antique statuettes, here a Cupid, there a Venus, 
are placed in niches; masks, antique busts and medal- 
lions of the emperors are introduced wherever the 


/©antenna 115 

space permits. Artists take as much pleasure in 
antique detail as a child with a new toy, and play with 
it wherever possible. Yet they never progress beyond 
this dallying appropriation of classic ornament. 
Nothing is more distant from the simplicity of antique 
line than a statue by Donatello, with its sharply 
accentuated head, long limbs, capriciously ordered 
draperies; nothing is less Hke the classic style of antique 
rehefs than Ghiberti's Baptistery doors, with their 
introduction of pictorial perspective. Even less do 
we find antique echoes in the types, costumes, position 
or arrangement of paintings of Uccello and Castagno, 
Fra Filippo and Gozzoli. 

Not until the second half of the fourteenth century 
does the antique begin to exercise a stylistic influence. 
This influence first appears in Padua, which was the 
city of Livy as well as of St. Anthony. When in 1413 
the supposed grave of the great Roman historian was 
discovered, every one, even the most humble, con- 
sidered himself a man of the antique world. Wherever 
Paduans went, they were enthusiastic collectors. 
Cardinal Scarampi, especially, is a type of the age; a 
prince of the church who took greatest pride in the fact 
that the arena of Padua belonged to him; an enthusiast 
for the antique, who had Roman aqueducts built, and 
in connection with Cyriacus of Ancona gathered a much 
envied collection of Greek gems. His counterpart in 
the domain of painting was Francesco Squarcione, who, 
in order to see the celebrated works of antique art, 


ii6 iRature auD Hntique 

travelled even in Greece; made plaster casts, collected 
busts, statues, reliefs, and fragments of architecture; 
and after his return to Padua opened an academy of 
painting on the basis of this collection. 

It is true that Squarcione's own works show little 
influence of the antique, and it would be erroneous to 
characterise Andrea Mantegna, his greatest pupil, as 
exclusively a partisan of the antique. Mantegna, of all 
painters, can only be explained through his own 
personality. Piero della Francesca and he signify 
respectively the soil and the rugged cliffs in Italian 
art. With Giotto, Castagno, and Segantini, he was 
one of the four great shepherd boys in the history 
of art. A keen Alpine air pervades his works; they 
have the quality of granite, like the cliffs of the 
Euganean Mountains. 

A glance at his portrait will reveal why the bust 
form was chosen for it. Although this was never done 
in painted likenesses of other artists of the quattrocento 
which survive, the master who created Mantegna's 
portrait had the feeling that only bronze would be 
suitable material for this stern head. What power, 
strength of purpose, and indomitable will appear in 
these features! This was evidently no mild and lov- 
able man, but a strong and harsh character. As his 
relations to Squarcione, who adopted him as a poor 
boy, soon changed into enmity, so he maintained the 
same stiff-necked pride towards his later prince, 
Gonzaga of Mantua. In his letters every word is as 


/IDanteona 117 

keen and biting as a sharp knife. As he was always 
in conflict with his prince, so neither could he live 
in peace with any neighbour, but accused and sued 
without mercy; every one who came in contact with 
him was wounded. Corresponding with these qualities 
in his pictures are the jagged halos and stiff tree- 
leaves, which also make the impression that one could 
scratch himself upon them so that the blood would 
flow. Of the same character is his entire art, which 
resembles a garden fenced closely about and full of 
steel traps. It sounds as sharp and as shrill as a brass 
shield struck by a sword. And it is precisely in this 
severity, from which everything mild, agreeable, and 
reconciling is eliminated, his one-sidedness and also his 
greatness lie. Le style c'esi I'homme. 

The man with the bronze head and the stony glance 
created people after his own image. How they stand 
there, pressed into their iron armour, like fabulous 
giants whose muscular backs and firm and sinewy legs 
seem formed by a sculptor rather than by a painter! 
Their whole bodies are tense, like an arrow on the string 
of a bow; just as Mantegna himself was always expect- 
ing opposition and ready for defence. They look 
sullen and silent, and the sharp folds that fall from the 
protruding cheekbones are hard and abrupt as if by 
a magic formula they had been petrified in motion. 
The draperies, even when they are of soft material, 
seem to be of steel; especially those stiff protruding 
little cloaks, which occur so frequently in his pictures. 


ii8 -flature an& Hnticiue 

In order to attain most pointed and stifF folds he was 
accustomed to model from rigidly sized paper and he 
would perhaps have preferred models of tin. This 
metallic style of drawing also reacts upon the colour. 
In conceiving appearances to be so rigid, he was 
naturally compelled to give the colour a metallic tone. 
Many of his figures, although they are painted after 
nature, resemble bronze statues, so hard are they in 
outline, and so much like polished bronze do the folds 
of the drapery glisten. 

His manner of choosing the accessories is also 
determined by the same point of view. As he loves 
warriors in bronze armour with glittering arms and 
draperies with stony folds, he also heaps about them 
accessories of similar appearance; armour, helmets, 
tin vessels, gleaming metallic greaves, jagged halos 
and nails. The halo, which with other artists is an 
ethereal representation, Mantegna forms of heavy, 
glittering rings of pewter; and angels' heads, lightly 
indicated by others, look like floating pieces of Robbia- 
ware. Upon his picture of the Resurrection the 
edges of the halo behind the Saviour are jagged and as 
sharp as those of a razor. In his line engraving of the 
Crucifixion the inscription I. N. R. I. is fastened 
with thick iron nails, and in the foreground lies a heavy 
door of dry oak with a rusty iron frame. In other 
pictures urns and vases, copper vessels and gold chains 
are used to heighten the metallic effect. 

Grandest of all, however, is his translation of land- 


/IDantegna 119 

scape into the brazen style. For people like those he 
created could not live on the ordinary earth, but 
needed a world of the same rigid grandeur. In his 
pictures there are no meadows and gardens, no grass 
and flowers; but creation is transformed into a vision 
of the age of stone: bared of the covering earthly 
crust, and only enlivened by blocks of stone, dried 
trees, hedges, boulders, and sandy roads. Upon the hill- 
tops turret-crowned castles and high-walled cities 
tower. All vegetation is dead and the slaty summits 
of the cliffs are pushed into the foreground, opening 
into yawning chasms. Many of these scenes he must 
certainly have seen in nature. When he paints the 
Deposition from the Cross in a quarry of trachyte, 
chooses a cave of black lava for the scene of the 
Adoration of the Kings, and depicts on the left wing 
of this altar-piece a towering volcanic diff, the basis of 
these paintmgs was probably studies made in the 
Euganean Mountains. But m other cases he uses the 
elements of nature for independent creations. As he 
loves to insert in the picture giant corals, such as no 
mineralogist has ever seen anywhere, so in the Ma- 
donna delta Peiriera he has enlarged a little stalactite 
formation into monumental proportions. In a quarry 
near by masons are occupied in hewing stone blocks; 
but even these are only introduced to strengthen 
the stony impression. The same purpose is served 
by his fondness for concentric paths ploughing 
through the hills. In introducing them he dis- 


I20 "flature anC> Bnticjue 

robes nature, as it were, and lays bare her stony 
skeleton. 

He proceeds in the same manner with plants, being 
especially fond of grapes and leaves of vines. Just as 
wonderfully as they can be imitated to-day — the fruit 
in glass, and leaves in tin — so he painted them, equally 
true and equally hard. Greater changes were necessary 
in order to make trees harmonise with his style. They 
seemed to wear heavy iron armour, and their leaves, 
which no breeze could disturb, hang fast as steel from 
the branches. The branches stretch into the air, jagged 
and barbed as the points of javelins. Even the 
plants which grow in this stony soil have something 
metallic and crystalline about them. Some look like 
zinc sprinkled with white lead; others as if painted over 
with a coat of greenish bronze through which the white 
leaves of the steel still shimmer. He has translated 
even the air and the sky into this stony style. The 
soft, melting, and intangible qualities of clouds are 
rendered in hard, sharply outlined plastic forms. It 
is no accident that the painter who paid most attention 
to clear outline was the first to master the technique 
of line engraving, which is most adapted to rendering, 
free from their coloured veil, objects in relief, strength 
of contour, and solidity of form. 

If we may at all speak of external influence in case 
of a mind like Mantegna's, it is probable that he received 
the determinative impression when Donatello was 
labouring in Padua. He probably witnessed the 


/Rante^na 121 

creation of the equestrian statue of Gattamelata as 
well as the reliefs of the high altar, and may perhaps 
have entered into personal relations with Donatello. 
At all events the great Florentine found his most 
capable pupil not in a sculptor, but in this painter. 
Bronze statues were the first works of art upon which 
the glance of the lad fell; and it was this taste for them 
which caused him to attempt such plastic effects, as 
though sculpture were an accessory to painting. Next 
to Donatello, his principal teacher was Paolo Uccello, 
who had come to Padua in the train of the great sculptor 
and had painted in the Palazzo Vitaliani. To him 
Mantegna owed his inclination to devote himself to the 
science of perspective, which he enriched by revolu- 
tionary discoveries. That at an earliei period he was 
also familiar with the works of Piero della Francesca 
may be concluded from the resemblance of his picture 
of the Resurrection, at Tours, to Piero's fresco in 
San Sepolcro, from the plein air methods which pervade 
his representation of the Legend o} St. Christopher, 
and, quite generally, from the problems of space which 
he attempted to solve. 

Even in the celebrated pictures which he painted 
from 1454 to 1459 (between his twenty-third and his 
twenty-eighth year) in the church of the Eremitani at 
Padua, these elements all appear. As well in his 
manner of showing the figures from below, foreshortened 
in the way they would actually appear to the observer 
looking upward, as in the general space arrangements. 


122 IRature an& Bntique 

he endeavours to create the impression of depth. At a 
later period, when decorating the ceiHng of the Camera 
degh Sposi in the Castello del Corte at Mantua, his 
perspective studies again led him to a new result. In 
transferring Uccello's principles to the decorating of 
the ceiling, he practically opened it, painting the ptitti 
as if they were actual beings suspended in space and 
seen from below; thereby becoming the inventor of 
perspective ceiling-decoration, and the ancestor of 
Correggio, Veronese, and Tiepolo. 

In the portrait groups also, which he painted on the 
walls of this hall, two centuries join hands. Artists had 
at first confined themselves to introducing portraits of 
the donors into religious representations, and after- 
wards Castagno had created the first life-sized single 
portraits; but in these scenes from the lives of the 
Gonzagas the first independent portrait groups are 
represented. The path is for the first time trodden 
which led to Tintoretto, and from him to the Dutch 
doelenstukken of the seventeenth century. 

But richest in consequence for the quattrocento was 
his relation to the antique. It is significant that the 
master who painted the portrait bust of Mantegna 
conceived him as a hero of antiquity, his long hair 
crowned with a laurel-wreath. For he towers in his 
epoch like the olTshoot of a forgotten heroic age, like a 
Hellene born after his day. It seems as if Providence 
had only made use of Squarcione in order to produce 
Mantegna; for it was in his spirit that what Squarcione 


/IDanteona 123 

had collected first won life and soul. In association 
with the humanists of Padua, he mastered the spirit 
of the antique, somewhat as Menzel mastered that of 
the age of Frederick the Great. With the zeal of an 
antiquarian, the scientific severity of an archaeologist, 
he sought out even the smallest fragments that would 
serve to afford a living picture of the antique world; 
such as reliefs, coins, inscriptions, works of marble and 
bronze. He took pains to ascertain, even to the small- 
est detail, the armament of the ancients, and was not 
satisfied until he knew the appearance of a Roman 
bridle or sandal; and he was as familiar with their archi- 
tectural forms as he was with their clothes, implements, 
and customs. In later life a sojourn in Rome afforded 
him a new opportunity to freshen his antique studies. 
Before this world of buildings and statues he stood 
amazed, and lingered, sketch-book in hand, before the 
column of Trajan and the arch of Titus. 

Even the impression of his early Paduan frescoes, 
although they treated saintly legends, is one of solemn 
classicism. The strictly Hellenic character of these 
structures could only be obtained by a master who had 
grown up in a classic atmosphere; and the Roman 
equipments of the soldiers by a painter whose mind was 
a veritable encyclopaedia of antiquity. When he painted 
the celebrated tablet in the Camera degli Sposi, telling in 
classical Latin and equally classic letters about the donor 
and the completion of the work, when he chained 
Sebastian not to a tree but to the ruin of a temple, 


124 IRature an5 Bntlque 

adding his name in Greek letters: such incidents only 
reveal how completely his spirit was dominated by the an- 
tique. Later, when Isabella d'Este mounted the throne 
of Mantua, the opportunity was afforded to create the 
work which he himself probably regarded as the climax 
of his artistic activity — the Triumph of CcesarA If 
formerly he could only use monuments of antiquity 
as accessories to religious paintings, he was now per- 
mitted to treat an actually antique theme. Making 
use of all the material he had collected for decades, he 
gave us the most learned reconstruction which antiquity 
has ever found; an evocation of the past to which 
following centuries could add nothing, either in the 
exactness of archaeological detail or in the thoroughly 
antique conception of the subject. 

But this is not the only novelty of his work, that to 
the Christian subjects which had heretofore dominated 
the repertoire of art the antique was now added. 
The occupation of artists with the antique introduced 
a number of new problems. To begin with, they were 
^inspired by antique statues to discover more exactly 
than had been done before the laws of movement in the 
nude. For even though Piero della Francesca had 
previously taken a decisive step in portraying the nude, 
it was not in the nature of his art to depict motion. 
All of his pictures are in motionless repose, as if planted 
for eternity. They stride as heavily to and fro as the 

' This celebrated series of nine cartoons on paper backed with can- 
vas is now at Hampton Court, near London. 



en 

i § 



/IDantegna 125 

peasant, who, walking through his field, sinks at every 
step in the loamy soil. Mantegna, whose beings lived not 
on the soil but in the mountains, supplemented Piero, 
in that he was the first to paint action as well as repose. 
He was the first to take up the movements of the nude 
body, with the resulting contractions and relaxation of 
the muscles, as an especial object of study. His line 
engraving of Hercules Strangling AnUeus, especially, 
must have affected the artists of those days like a 
revelation. 

No less evident is the influence of the antique in his 
treatment of costume. Whereas, heretofore, the hi- 
larrerie of fashion had been an inexhaustible field of 
new discoveries for the painters, Mantegna altogether 
avoids contemporary costumes; substituting for the 
gaiety of costume and bric-a-brac, which former artists 
had loved, simple antique draperies, upon the artistic 
rendition of which he bestowed special attention. 
Something similar had been attempted by Piero della 
Francesca; but for Mantegna the search for beautiful^ 
motives of drapery is a determinative factor of the 
artistic activity. Not satisfied with arranging the 
draperies about the body with sovereign tact, he 
approached those problems of harmony and elegance 
which the sculptors of antiquity had so matchlessly 
solved. Even in one of his first works, Sant^ Eujemia 
in the Brera, the play of the draperies is equal in beauty 
to the best draped statues of antiquity. His Par- 
nassus, in the Louvre, painted for the private room 


126 IRature an^ Bntique 

of Isabella d'Este, might be a work of Poussin in the 
severe antiquity of the rhythm of movement and the 
fall of the light draperies, here softly clinging to the 
body, there fluttering in the wind. Quite a new order of 
beauty, having nothing in common with the joyful 
realism and the indiscriminate copying of nature of 
the early qiiaiirocenio , makes its triumphal entry into 
art. 

To recapitulate: Mantegna was the first to give his 
figures full plastic rotundity; to create the earliest 
perspective ceiling decorations and the earliest portrait 
groups, and to raise the study of the nude in motion and 
of draperies to a real artistic problem. He stands, 
therefore, revealed as the genius who, next to Piero 
della Francesca, exercised the most determinative 
influence upon the artistic activity of the younger 
generation. 

IDH. Cbc Successors ot /Iftantcgna 

Without Mantegna, Melozzo da Forli is unthinkable.^ 
He lacks, however, the sturdy greatness of the Paduan; 
being as soft as the latter is hard, and as mild as he is 
austere and defiant. He was also influenced by his 
countryman Piero della Francesca, who imparted to 
him something of his delicate charm. 

' It is, however, the prevailing opinion with art historians that 
the two painters working independently arrived at the same results. 
The same is probably true of Antonio Pollajuolo and the next artist 
treated, whose style was formed before Mantegna's brief stay in 
Florence. — Ed. 


Successors of /llbanteana 127 

Even in his earliest works, the personifications of the 
liberal arts, which in 1474 he painted for the Hbrary 
of the Duke of Urbino, the manner in which he com- 
posed his figures in space reveals his relation to Piero. 
Instead of arranging the scenes in the manner of relief — 
the figure of each science to the left and her followers 
to the right — he places the throne in the middle of the 
background, with the masculine figures kneeling before 
it, and indicates the dimension of depth by means of 
the steps of the throne. In addition to this, he was 
principally occupied with draperies. With outspoken 
formal talent, he devoted to the cast of draperies an 
attention which would have delighted Fra Barto- 
lommeo, the inventor of the lay figure. 

In his next work, the painting of the cupola of the 
cathedral of Loreto, he first attempted Mantegna's 
problem of painting from below, but did not succeed 
in solving it, because he was lacking in a certain light- 
ness; his figures are smothered in their heavy draperies. 
These difficulties were at last overcome in his cupola 
frescoes of Santi Apostoli at Rome. As Vasari 
relates, Christ was suspended so freely in the air that 
he seemed to burst the vaulting of the cupola, and the 
angels, too, appeared to move in the free space of 
heaven. As the cupola has been destroyed, it is im- 
possible at the same time to say how far these per- 
spective illusions were successful; but the fragments 
preserved in the sacristy of the Vatican are as remark- 
able for a delicate sense of beauty as for the mastery 

VOL. I. 9 


128 IRaturc an^ Bntique 

of perspective. The angels with their fair fluttering 
locks, making music and singing while they are wafted 
about and a supernatural breeze stirs their garments, 
have not ceased to exercise their attraction for succeed- 
ing generations. 

In this last work, the fresco of the Vatican Library 
representing Sixtus IV. appointing Platina its director, 
Mantegna and Piero della Francesca again clasp hands. 
With some resemblance to Mantegna's portraiture, he 
has created a portrait group of representative nobility. 
The disposition of the space noticeable in the keen 
foreshortening of the incrusted ceiling, the manner in 
which the columns recede, and in the view of the loggia 
opening in the background reminds one of Piero's 
Santa Conversazione at Milan, and at the same time 
points to the future; for Raphael had this picture in 
mind when he conceived the School of Athens. 

In Florence, where in 1466 Mantegna had resided, 
he found a successor in Antonio Pollajuolo, the great 
bronze caster. Like Melozzo the latter was influenced 
by the mighty statuesque qualities of the Paduan and 
the classic repose of his draperies, especially when he 
created in the figures of the Five Virtues for the 
Mercatoria in Florence the counterpiece of the former's 
Sciences in the library of Urbino. But in another 
domain Mantegna was even more his master. Polla- 
juolo was first to acquire the technique of line engrav- 
ing, and among his prints, one in especial, the Battle 
of the Nudes, is characteristic of his tendency. Never 


Successors of ^anteona 129 

had fiercely struggling figures, life and motion, been 
presented with such skill. All the muscular con- 
tractions and complicated motives of motion are 
rendered with a hitherto unknown mastery. This 
print is also significant of the tendency that ruled him 
as a painter. Following Mantegna he made anatomy 
a special field of study. " He understood the nude," 
relates Vasari, "better than any of his predecessors. 
As he studied anatomy on the dissecting table, he was 
the first to render the full play of muscles." From this 
point of view he chose his subjects, and by it alone his 
pictures should be criticised. Human bodies, contending 
in battle, contracted limbs in the most difficult contor- 
tions, the commingling and contest of struggling forces 
— such is his domain. His practise of bronze casting 
may also be recognised in his rendition of form, his pre- 
ference for well rounded and undulating positions, and in 
the hard metallic character which characterises his style. 
Of Christian subjects affording an opportunity for 
the solution of such problems he first chose Sebastian. 
The life-size painting in the Pitti Gallery reveals mighty 
forms which seem cast in bronze, with foreshortened 
head, swollen muscles and a loin-cloth formed like a 
bronze plate. In the London picture he has increased 
the problem by the introduction of archers: six men 
spanning crossbows and shooting at a nude figure. 
This gives an opportunity for varied positions and a 
rich play of muscles. Some of the executioners bend- 
ing over to string their bows do it with such zeal that 


I30 IRaturc an^ Bntique 

one can see their veins swell; their sinews, hair, and the 
wrinkles of their faces are chiselled in bronze. For a 
similar reason he added to his repertoire the figures 
of Hercules, whose labours he depicted in a series of 
decorative paintings in the Palazzo di Venezia and the 
small double figures in the Uffizr. Hercules Strangling 
AntcEus and ihe Hydra. How in the picture of Antaeus 
the feet of Hercules are fastened to the earth; how the 
calves of his legs swell and his breast is thrown back- 
ward; and with what strangling power he clutches his 
antagonist— all this is another triumph in the represent- 
ation of motion and of the nude. Even in the little panel 
of Apollo and Daphne in the National Gallery, the 
theme is chosen from this point of view. The elastic 
body of a youth and the austere body of a maiden, one 
following, the other fleeing— is this not a veritable 
compendium of difficult movements and anatomical 
studies? Along with human anatomy he was occupied 
with that of the horse, as witness the Munich sketch 
for an equestrian monument, which long passed for 
the work of Leonardo. We can understand how 
artists stood astonished before such works, for no 
Florentine before Pollajuolo had thus mastered the 
structure of the bodies of men and animals. 

"What with Pollajuolo was still experimental, Signor- 
elli raised to quiet mastery. After Mantegna and 
Pollajuolo had fixed the laws of motion for the nude 
body, it was only left for Signorelli to go one step further 
and express the emotions of the soul by movements of 


Successors of /iDanteona 131 

the body. He is, therefore, the connecting hnk between 
Mantegna and Michelangelo. The activity of Signorelli 
included everything. He painted altar-pieces for 
the cities of Tuscany and Umbria, and even in these 
he is reflected as a serious and virile master. Like 
JVlantegna he knows no gentle lyricism; his pictures 
are crude and harsh, almost brusque and violent; 
he loves hard faces and profiles as sharp as a razor. 
But most of all he loved the nude, less the softness 
of the feminine body than the sinewy spareness of the 
masculine. Not because the legend tempted him, but 
only to glorify the splendour of the nude and sinewy 
human body, he painted the Education of Pan. 
In this painting, now in the Gallery of Berlin, all the 
movements of which the nude body is capable are 
represented; some of the figures are erect, others 
are seated, and still others recline. He is actuated 
by a similar point of view in the choice of his biblical 
subjects. The Baptism of Christ was a favourite, be- 
cause it permitted him to represent in the figures of 
the candidates for baptism bodies in various positions. 
But he was fond of the Crucifixion, because the 
theme gave opportunity to depict a corpse with all 
possible contractions and contortions of the sinews. 
Of the saints who stand about the throne of Mary, 
Jerome was his favourite, because tradition per- 
mitted him to represent an aged body with wrinkled 
skin and overworked muscles. If such a figure is not 
possible in the foreground, he inserts it in the back- 


132 Bature anO Bntique 

ground, even though it may be in no wise related 
with the theme. It is like a monogram of Signorelli 
to find in all of his paintings, even in portraits, nude 
youths standing, sitting, or reclining. The rear viev/, 
showing powerful thighs and firm shoulder-blades, 
particularly tempts him. If there is no opportunity 
to depict such figures nude, he at least paints them 
clothed in tricot or tight-fitting armour. The angels 
are therefore his friends, especially Michael with 
his gleaming coat of mail, and lansquenets with 
stretched, steely sinews. It is especially these ener- 
getic, weather-browned figures, standing with legs 
spread apart, in a position which gives opportunity 
for all the muscles to play, and defiant as if they were 
courting danger, which gives his pictures a heroic, 
martial boldness. In his female figures and saints 
the drapery is simple and dignified without unnecessary 
bulging folds, everything being arranged in heavy 
masses and in great simple lines. To this powerful 
strength of line the colour quite corresponds. As in the 
case of Mantegna, it has a certain metallic sharpness, 
a tone of copper or bronze, not hard or dry but grey 
and gloomy. Although, as a pupil of Piero della 
Francesca, he is occupied in the Education of Pan 
with the study of reflex light, he is nevertheless too 
much of a draughstman and anatomist, too serious 
and harsh, to seek after charms of colour. 

When he is not confined by the size of a panel paint- 
ing, but stands in front of large mural surfaces, a great 


Successors ot /iDantcoua 133 

dramatic talent rises witliin him. Among the paint- 
ings of the Sistine Chapel those of Signorelli immediately 
attract attention by their dramatic action and by a 
certain crude beauty. In his second cycle, the scenes 
from the Life of St. Benedict, painted in 1447 for 
the monastery of Monte Oliveto near Siena, the manner 
in which he has treated the theme is very characteristic. 
Passing over the youthful life of his hero, he begins 
abruptly with the picture which gives the opportunity 
to represent wild motion, the Punishment of Florens. 
In further sequence he selects scenes in which it is 
possible to portray lansquenets with martial equipment, 
especially soldiers on the march with halberds, 
feathered caps, and tightly fitting checkered uniforms. 
When in his sixtieth year he was summoned to create 
his most celebrated work, the cycle of frescoes at 
Orvieto, he did not need to select a subject; the theme 
was as if created for him: the Last Judgment, its 
Approach, Heaven, and HeU. Here, where there 
was nothing but nudes to be portrayed and he 
was not circumscribed by the size of the picture, his 
power grew into something tremendous. Had Fiesole, 
the beginner of the work, completed it, the spectator 
would have been led into a kingdom of eternal peace. 
Signorelli, on the other hand, changes heaven and hell 
into an anatomical theatre. Delicacy and tenderness 
of expression are not to be found, but in the manner in 
which he uses the nude to express emotion, developing 
psychical motives from physical action, there lies a 


134 IRature aii& Bntique 

superhuman, a Titanic greatness. Here the dead are 
slowly and solemnly leaving their graves, some still 
ascending from the earth, others already risen and 
stretching their limbs as after a long sleep. There joy 
and blessedness prevail; knees are bowed, hands laid 
upon hearts and arms raised gratefully towards heaven. 
In the last painting Hell is an athletic drama. 
Monsters fly through the air; wild demons knead and 
strangle their victims as if with bronze tongs; nude 
bodies writhe in cramped convulsions on the ground 
or brace themselves up against crazing agony. 

The tendencies which began with Mantegna and 
formed the life work of Pollajuolo thus found in 
Signorelli their consummation. 

HiHlf. 1bugo van Der ©oes 

In the meanv/hile an abrupt change of scene had 
taken place in Florence. About the same time that 
Mantegna resided there, a picture had arrived from 
the Netherlands before which to-day one stands 
astonished in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. 
Hugo van der Goes, the painter of this work, is known 
also from many similar works in German and Belgian 
galleries. In one of them at Brussels, a young Fran- 
ciscan kneels in silent adoration before Mary in the 
midst of a yellowish-green autumn landscape. In 
an Annunciation at Munich, he attempts the very 
modern problem of creating a harmony in white. 
Instead of a warm and glowing tone, the picture was 


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Ibuoo vail ^er Goes 135 

intended to have a light and silvery effect, but it be- 
came hard, cold, and chalky. In his portraits he often 
frightens by phenomenal ugliness. It seemed as if he 
took delight in the mongrel when he painted Cardinal 
Bourbon looking like an old woman. A toilsome, 
troubled, and struggling element runs through his work; 
he appears as a tormented spirit, always undertaking 
new problems, but who in the course of the work lost 
confidence and inspiration. 

What may be read from his pictures is confirmed by 
his biography. At first he was a pleasure-loving child 
of the world. The town council of Bruges summoned 
him when pompous processions were to be arranged, 
arches of honour to be erected, or banners painted with 
the festal images of antique heroes and goddesses. 
Wine, women, and song dominated his life. Suddenly 
he withdrew into the Augustinian convent in the wood 
of Soignies, to live only for the salvation of his soul. 
For a while two powers, the spirit of worldliness and 
the spirit of self-denial, struggled within him. He still 
rejoiced to take part in the sumptuous repasts of the 
noble lords who came to the monastery for portrait 
sittings; but such hours of worldly delight were followed 
by others of deepest despondency in which he con- 
sidered himself eternally damned. Conscience-stricken, 
he now painted pictures devoted to the end of things 
and to the bitter sufferings of the Saviour. In a 
painting at Frankfort, Mary stands with the veil of a 
matron drawn over her head and gazes with solemn 


ij6 IRaturc anC> Bntique 

earnestness upon the Child; in one at Venice the lifeless 
body of the Redeemer hangs in a gloomy landscape; 
in another, at Bruges, Mary lies upon her death-bed, 
while to her failing eyes the Redeemer appears in 
heavenly glory; and in still another, at Vienna, friends 
are mournfully taking the rigid body of our Lord down 
from the cross — the old theme which Roger so often 
painted. With Goes, however, there is no pathos and 
no wailing ; everything is suppressed and deep, a hopeless 
woe, to which not even tears will bring relief. A pale 
woman, deserted and emaciated in appearance, the Mag- 
dalen silently folds her hands and gazes gloomily into 
space. Ravens flutter about the cross, which towers 
like a ghost into the clouded evening sky. But even 
such pictures do not express what Goes wishes to say. 
He conceived the strangest plans — visions of pictures 
for the completion of which one life seemed too short; 
for during the work he lost pleasure in it, and despaired 
of ever expressing the feelings that moved his heart. 
One day, with the cry, " I am damned," he collapsed. 
All the scruples of conscience which for years had 
martyred his soul ended in religious insanity, and 
henceforth only the resounding tones of the organ and 
the pious songs of the brethren gave relief to his 
torments. 

His works show what a noble spirit was here 
crushed. The altar-piece with the Adoraiion of the 
Kings which, under the orders of Tommaso Portinari, 
the Medicean agent in Bruges, he painted for Santa 


■ffDiiOO van ^ct (3ocs 137 

Maria Nuova, offers one of the most powerful artistic 
impressions to be experienced in Florence. The thought 
is as new as is the problem of light which he proposes. 
On a heap of straw, the Christ-child reclines, encircled 
by rays of light, which also illumine the kneeling 
Madonna. Languishing angels kneel about or hover 
in the air. One in particular, joyfully rising on gleam- 
ing wings to heaven, but still illumined by the divine 
light flooding the lower part of his clothing, might 
have been taken from the painting by Rembrandt. 
But we are also reminded of Bocklin. The manner in 
which light green branches stand out against the deep 
blue sky and the fire-red lily standing as a bold spot 
of colour in the foreground are conceptions of colour 
which belong much less in the fifteenth than at the end 
of the nineteenth century. In the garments dark blue, 
violet, green, and gloomy black tones of colour are 
united in accords never before heard. An indefinable 
charm is woven about the figure of the Madonna, who 
looks not like a maiden but like a woman who has 
experienced the mighty pains of childbirth. Old and 
sullen, with the callous hands of a labourer, and yet 
majestic as a doge by Tintoretto, Joseph stands near 
by. On the other side are the nude and weather-beaten 
figures of the shepherds, sun-browned, rough, and true: 
one of them kneeling, another gazing curiously, and a 
third approaching in breathless haste. Remembering 
the difficulties experienced by painters even of the 
seventeenth cenutry in avoiding caricature when paint- 


138 IRature anD Biitiquc 

ing peasant pictures, and recalling the grotesque 
boobies and drunken harlequins introduced by Brueghel 
and Ostade as peasants, one cannot but admire 
the great and simple realism of this master, who 
approaches Millet and Bastien-Lepage. 

Even more impressive than this central panel are the 
wings of the altar. On the one side are saints, strange 
Jewish types of patriarchal, royal dignity. At their 
feet kneels the great grandson of Dante's Beatrice, 
Tommaso Portinari — a fme head with the solemn and 
reticent features of an aristocratic merchant; and at 
his side the pale, modest faces of his two boys, wonder- 
ing what it is all about, and timidly, half mechanically 
folding their dainty fingers in prayer. The other wing 
is devoted to women of quiet and noble dignity: his 
wife, slender and delicate, his fair little daughter, fresh 
as a schoolgirl, and, behind them, their patron saints, 
Margaret and Mary Magdalen, dressed like princesses 
in grey, gold-bordered robes and shimmering white 
damask, with hair combed back and covered with a 
high and coquettish cap. Even the older artists 
celebrated Goes as the greatest painter of female por- 
traits of this epoch. Van Mander speaks of their well- 
bred modesty and their sweet, demure appearance, as 
if Cupid and the Graces had guided the artist's brush — 
statements confirmed by the Portinari altar. The 
artist's strong and powerful characterisation of men 
does not prevent an equal success with women. To a 
subtle and distinguished bearing, almost affected in its 


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Ibuao van ber (Boes 139 

girlish coyness, he adds a flowerHke grace; and at the 
same time a solemn melancholy lies in the pale, thought- 
ful heads, with dark eyes shaded by thin brows, and 
small, nervously twitching lips. The hands, in the 
case of men so hard and callous, are delicate and white, 
and as expressive as if they could themselves relate 
romances. With an austere charm he combines meas- 
ured harmony and a grandeur of style, which makes 
quite intelligible that his highest ideal was fresco 
painting. Every theme is of a monumental sublimity 
such as no Flemish artist since Hubert van Eyck had 
attained. 

Hand in hand with this grandeur of line goes an 
intimate quality of landscape painting such as had 
never yet appeared. Jan van Eyck, the first landscape 
painter of the Netherlands, had been attracted to his 
theme by the exotic taste of a tourist. As a widely 
travelled artist he presents to his simple countrymen, 
who had never got beyond Bruges or Ghent, all the gay 
splendour of the south. Even when he occasionally 
renders Flemish motives, there is something elaborate 
and overloaded about his landscapes. The same 
tendency which led him to represent his figures in rich 
robes, and to weave flowers and gold seams into their 
garments, caused him to paint lansdcapes much richer 
than they actually are. The most heterogeneous 
vegetation, palm-trees, sorbs, cypresses, and pines, he 
depicted as growing side by side, only to attain a rich 
effect and without regard for season and climate. In 


140 H^ature anb Bntique 

place of this festal feeling of Jan van Eyck, Goes sub- 
stitutes the intimate and the every-day. The first to 
feel that landscape did not need to be exotic and 
adorned, he revealed a taste for the simple nature that 
he saw about him; for acres, meadows, ponds, and 
trees. In the right panel of the altar just mentioned 
with the lofty trees, on whose bare branches crows have 
alighted, one gazes into a fallow winter landscape, 
sadly stretching out beneath a clouded sky. At the 
same time he penetrated more than did the earlier 
artists into the very structure of the landscape. While 
Jan placed flowers and trees carefully in his pictures, 
as children do with their toys. Goes was the first to 
examine their roots and leaves. The manner in which 
he paints trees is extraordinary. Each has its own 
physiognomy, and yet, with the finest calculation, all 
the lines are subordinated to the chief outlines of the 
figures. 

Under the influence of this wonderful work an entirely 
new conception of nature must have originated, which, 
characteristically for the epoch, took root not in the 
Netherlands but in Italy. While it would hardly have 
found appreciation in the north, in the south painters 
streamed to see it. Piero della Francesca must have 
had it in mind when he painted his Oxford Madonna, 
and the Birth of Christ and the Santa Conversa- 
lione in the Brera. This is indicated by the type of 
the Madonna in the first named painting, the group of 
shepherds in the second, and in the third by the figure 


of the saint to the left, which seems to have been taken 
directly from the Flemish altar-piece. Jean Foucquet, 
the Frenchman, must also have seen works of Goes; 
for the resemblance of his Etienne Chevalier, whom in 
the Berlin painting St. Stephen commends to the 
Madonna, to Goes's St. Victor is too striking to be 
accidental. Other adaptations may be seen in the 
works of Baldovinetti, Piero di Cosimo, Ghirlandajo, 
Lorenzo di Credi and Piero Pollajuolo, and it was under 
the impression of Goes's work that the Duke of Urbino 
summoned a Fleming, Justus van Ghent, to his court. 
It would be wrong, however, to emphasise only such 
details. The whole further development of Florentine 
art indicates that, next to the visit of Mantegna, the 
appearance of this Flemish altar-piece was regarded as 
the greatest artistic event of the decade between 
1460 and 1470.' 

Its influence is next revealed in the new colouristic 
tendencies of the painters. While, with the exception 

' Professor Muther's view of the influence of van der Goes, anJ 
particularly of the Portinari altar-piece, upon Florentine painting is a 
very interesting as vt'ell as a novel one. The more detailed statement 
of the proofs which his promised larger work will doubtlessly contain, 
should prove most valuable. For the present, it seems to us that this 
influence is somewhat overrated. From a chronological point of view, 
it is difficult to conceive of a marked influence upon Piero della Fran- 
cesca, who was some twenty years his senior, and whose style was 
certainly formed before he saw the Portinari altar-piece; and the same 
is true of other masters mentioned. The change in colouristic tendencies 
in Florentine art revealed in the work of Baldovinetti, the improved 
rendition of atmosphere practised by Verrocchio and the other changes 
noted were, in our opinion, due to tendencies which existed in Flor- 
entine art before the arrival of Goes's celebrated altar-piece. — Ed. 


142 IWature an5 Butique 

of Domenico Veneziano, they had not progressed 
beyond the primitive colouring of the Florentine 
school, they now cultivated the purely pictorial element. 
Even more than formerly ornaments, architecture, and 
landscape were introduced to increase the brightness 
of colour. Furthermore, the peasant figures of the 
altar-piece and its wonderfully painted animals stim- 
ulated the taste for rusticity. Another element new 
to Florentine art is evidently connected with the ap- 
pearance of Goes's work — grace. In the earlier works 
of the fifteenth century, like those of Filippo Lippi and 
Gozzoli, a thoughtless and rather vulgar charm pre- 
vailed, and in Castagno the spirit of the quattrocento 
found expression in all its energy, manhood, and defiant 
strength. This tendency towards the powerful was 
now followed by an artistic trend, more feminine in 
character; and the distinguished delicacy and silent 
melancholy which beams from the eye of Goes's women 
now enters Florentine painting. In wholesome Italian 
art the fascinating charm of sickness appears. When 
suddenly all painters, as if by appointment, began to 
paint Tobias or the legend of the Blind Man 
Restored to Sight, it almost seems like homage to the 
great Fleming who opened their eyes and revealed to 
them new a beauty. 

Alessio Baldovinetti was called by his training — for 
he was a pupil of Domenico Veneziano — to take uo the 
new colouristic principles of the Netherlanders. Vasari 
describes him as a Flemish miniature-painter: rivers. 


t>mo van C)cr Goes 143 

bridges, stones, grasses, fruits, paths, fields, villas, and 
palaces, all such things he painted after nature. In 
his Birth of Christ one can count the blades of straw 
and the roots of the ivy, the leaves of which are also 
painted true to nature, of deeper colour on the one side 
than on the other. One sees also a half-fallen house, 
the stones of which, weather-beaten by rain and frost, 
are covered with moss; a snake creeps along a wall. 
In fact, the group of shepherds in this picture, painted 
in the forecourt of Santa Annunziata, leaves no doubt 
that he was familiar with Goes's altar-piece. Not only 
in his gleaming colour did he follow the refined Fleming. 
Some of his pictures, like the Annunciation and 
the Madonna in the Duchatel collection, formerly 
ascribed to Piero della Francesca, characterise him 
as a delicate painter of women, who transformed the 
feminine trend of Goes (which likewise ran through the 
works of Domenico Veneziano) into an almost afi'ected 
grace. In the last named painting the landscape also 
contributes a strange, romantic charm. 

To ascribe this group to Verrocchio, the great 
sculptor in bronze, seems uncalled-for. For he is known 
as the artist who created in his Colleoni the most power- 
ful equestrian statue of the quattrocento, and as the 
master of the Baptism of Christ, a harsh, ascetic 
picture with the two nude sinewy bodies, which is 
generally used to contrast the "dry realism" of 
Verrocchio with the celestial tenderness of his pupil 
Leonardo. Yet at bottom Verrocchio was not a harsh. 

VOL. I. — 10 


144 Ittature mt> Hntique 

but a gentle spirit. Although he conceived the CoUeoni, 
it was no longer as a man who had himself, like Dona- 
tello, lived in the age of the condotiieri, but as the 
survivor of a vanished age, for whom this CoUeoni 
meant the "last knight" — the symbol of a spur-clang- 
ing, heroically great past, to which the present looked 
up v/ith sad astonishment. This thoughtful, dreamy 
present lives in the gracious head of his David, and 
in the dainty, almost coquettish pictures of the master, 
who in his portrait looks into the world as quiet and 
thoughtful as a Florentine Giambellini, and in no respect 
resembles the wild and defiant race to which Donatello 
and Castagno belonged. Castagno's Pippo Spano 
creates such a powerful impression because he wears his 
armour as unconcernedly as we a dressing gown. 
Verrocchio can only attain this impression artificially 
by adorning the armour of his hero with the serpents 
and heads of gorgons. 

He may have received his first impressions from 
Mantegna, whom he approaches in the plastic finish 
of his figures. Well rounded bodies, tense lines, neat- 
ness and precision of outline, the greatest smoothness 
and finish of surfaces — everything that a good bronze 
cast should have he endeavours to reproduce. In 
addition to this he shows a goldsmith's delicacy in the 
finish of accessories; every ornament, the golden em- 
broidery of the clothes as well as the dainty gauze veil 
which adorns Marv's head, is painted with the most 
careful accuracy. Goes strengthened him in these 


1F5uao van &er 6oes i4S 

colouristic tendencies. Verrocchio's workshop was the 
first one in Florence where oil-painting was system- 
atically carried on. Under the influence of Goes, he also 
guided Florentine landscape painting into new paths. 
In contrast to the earlier Florentines, who had lost 
themselves in elaborate detail and caused the most 
distant objects to gleam in unbroken colours, Verrocchio 
had a taste for simple plains, which he depicted with 
certain plein air tendencies. His favourite hour was 
the twilight, when the trees stand out black from the 
light grey heaven and the cool moisture sinks over 
withered and dusty plains. 

But even more characteristic of the impression of his 
pictures is the dainty grace which he endeavours to 
render in facial expression and motion. While the 
figures of Donatello and Castagno hold their hands 
wide open and extend the second finger, Verrocchio's 
merely bend the little finger — a detail which alone is 
significant of the change of taste: there, energy; here, 
an almost affected delicacy. Noli me iangere is the 
inscription upon his portrait of a girl in the Berlin 
Museum, which might also serve for Castagno's portrait 
of Pippo Spano, though in a very different sense. 
Verrocchio himself felt what a delicate, fragile ideal 
he substituted for the mighty, powerful figures of the 
older masters. He was the first to depict the dainty 
putto in place of their robust, healthy children; to give 
to the features of the Madonna a touch of that soft, 
enchanting smile associated with Leonardo's name. 


146 Ittature an^ HnttQue 

His picture Tobias in the Florentine Academy pro- 
bably contains the quintessence of his work. This 
subtle, maidenly youth with the wavy locks, striding 
in minuet step through the landscape, with bands and 
sashes clinging and fluttering in the breeze, and raising 
with mannered grace his fine, aristocratic hands — such a 
figure clearly reveals that the ideal of beauty cherished 
by this new generation was directly the opposite of 
what their fathers had honoured. 

If Verrocchio, in his own works, at least, reminds us 
of the powerful past, Piero PoUajuolo is quite an off- 
shoot of this new over-delicate age: as fine in feeling as 
he is weak, pale and dreamy; a Niels Lyhne of the 
quattrocento, oscillating between one master and an- 
other, and unable to stand without leaning in feminine 
devotion upon some stronger man. In his earliest 
work, the Coronation of the Virgin (1483) he is 
still dominated by his teacher Castagno, and attempts 
to be crude and powerful. But it is not in him to 
paint in this rugged fashion; and Hugo van der Goes 
furnished him an ideal more in accordance with his 
nature. The bearded man in his Three Kings is 
taken literally from the Flemish altar-piece. Like 
Baldovinetti, he then turned to colour and created the 
Annunciation of the Berlin Gallery, which in its 
deep glowing fire belongs to the greatest pictorial 
achievements of Florentine art. But he is most at 
home in those works in which he translates the dainti- 
ness of Verrocchio and the grace of Goes into an even 


Xoren30 tbe /IDacjnificent 147 

greater effeminacy. He is especially fond of painting 
limp, falling boot-legs — a symbol, by the way, of his 
own character. It seems as if the whole weariness of a 
sinking century weighed upon his small shoulders. A 
strange feeling of decadence exhales from these tender, 
languishing figures who are clothed so coquettishly, 
move their hands so affectedly, and so modestly tread 
the earth. Witness his David in Berlin, which 
might just as well have been painted by a modern 
Rosicrucian as by a son of the youthful quattrocento; 
or his Tobias in the Turin Gallery, with the nervous 
white lapdog and the mincing, affected beings, so timid, 
weakly, and over-delicate that they tremble at every 
noise. It might be said that this Tobias laying his 
little hand upon the arm of a strong man is Piero 
Pollajuolo himself, helpless the moment a stronger does 
not lead him. As he was fourteen years younger than 
his brother Antonio, one might think of the pampered 
helplessness of late-born children, if this soft, weary 
trait did not pervade the entire epoch. The strong 
were followed by the weak, the healthy by the nervous, 
and the conquerors by the weary aristocrats, wishing 
no longer to work but only to enjoy. 

\i)1f1[ir. Zbc Sge of ILorenso tbe /iBagnificent 

Lorenzo the Magnificent embodied in his personality 
the age in which he lived. After the elder Cosimo, 
the wise and able banker who had collected the 
riches of the house of Medici, came his grandson who 


148 IRaturc an& Hnttque 

enjoyed ihem. For Cosimo business stood in the 
foreground, and art was only a means of making an 
impression on the people. Lorenzo, who through his 
marriage with Clarice Orsini had invested their modern 
coat of arms with the lustre of an ancient house, was 
too much of the grand seigneur to soil his hands with 
money affairs. With him the patronage of art was 
an artistic predilection. 

Reared in the midst of all the works of art which three 
generations of his family had collected, his eye was 
accustomed to the finest aesthetic enjoyment. He could 
suffer nothing ugly or plebeian about him; every object, 
whether it be furniture or ornament, gobelins or table 
furniture, must be a work of art, a jewel in itself. 
Festivals of costume, showy tournaments, and festal 
processions were arranged, because they disguised grey 
life with a brighter lustre. But not only the eye was 
delighted with the most costly enjoyment; a like cult 
was dedicated to all the senses. For the age of the 
Magnifico is also that of music and of love, of flowers 
and gastronomy. 

A pronounced aristocratic tendency, a feeling of 
Odi projanum vulgus et arceo, pervaded the age. 
While Cosimo had endeavoured to be one of the people, 
Lorenzo is a solitary man. As in Barre's novel Sous 
Voeil des harhares, humanity is divided into two classes, 
the barbarians and the intelligent. The barbarians are 
all those who have to work and live a commonplace, 
cvery-day life; the intelligent are the chosen ones, the 


Xorenso tbe /IDagnificent 149 

elite of the spirit, the aesthetic connoisseurs, who in the 
midst of the plebeian world create for themselves an 
artificial paradise, where they live in association with 
works of art and books which suit their exquisite 
taste. As in the day when Horace wrote Beatus ilk 
qui procul negoiiis, country life is the ideal of the 
elect. Lorenzo seldom tarried in the city, but led, in 
his villas of Careggi, Caffagiolo, and Poggio a 
Cajano, the life of a country gentleman surrounded by 
choice spirits, who, like himself, considered themselves 
devotees of pure beauty. The Platonic Academy 
especially, founded by Cosimo de' Medici, acquired a 
new importance under Lorenzo. Although it had 
formerly been dedicated to learned studies it now 
became a voluntary association of friends, who, as 
"brothers in Plato," professed the cult of the senses 
and faith in the ancient gods of Greece. Christianity, 
as a universal religion, meant little to such aesthetes. 
They were so epicurean in matters of form that the 
Bible repelled them, because "the style of Holy Writ 
was bad." They assembled in Lorenzo's villa at 
Careggi, that charming building whose ruins even to-day 
are replete with the full charm of the early Renaissance. 
Wide, shadowy rows of columns surround a quiet court- 
yard in which a fountain dreamily patters, and from 
the windows of the high, graceful, simple rooms, the 
view extends over the blooming valley of the Arno 
and the hills of Fiesole adorned with villas, where pines 
and dark cypresses rise above grey olives and sun- 


I50 feature an^ Bntique 

crowned laurel. To the clink of beakers and the music 
of the harp, they discussed Platonic dialogues or read 
new poems. If the heat was oppressive they fled into 
the woodland hills, as described by Landini in that 
passage so strangely recalling Boccaccio. They lay 
down in the silent coolness of the wood under lofty 
plantains; a brook rippled near by, and the view ex- 
tended to the sea shimmering in the distance. In this 
secluded solitude, into which the sound of no church 
bells penetrated, they forgot that they were Christians 
and believed themselves Greeks as they philosophised 
about the conception of human happiness. 

The poems of Poliziano and Lorenzo are the chief 
literary works of this select circle. Although not replete 
with deep thought, they are full of grace, the poetry 
of souls thirsting after beauty and tuned to Arcadian 
repose; who have fled from Golgotha to Olympus, from 
the present into a distant Elysium. Poliziano wrote his 
Giosira, a mythological poem in praise of the tourna- 
ment which Giuliano de' Medici, the elegant and 
chivalric leader of the gilded youth, had held in honour 
of his Simonetta; and Lorenzo dedicated sonnets full 
of tender infatuation to his beloved Lucrezia Donati. 
These sonnets curiously illumine the ideal of beauty of 
this over-refmed age. For what he treasured in 
woman was not a wholesome and robust, but a 
suffering beauty of ethereal pallor and with deathly 
sick, enchanting eyes — the beauty of consumption, 
from which Simonetta died. 


Xorenso tbe /IDaGniflcent 151 

The sentiment of Vergil's Eclogues pervades his 
Nencia, the jests of a joyful carnival his lightly clad 
Canti di hallo; and his Corinto, the love plaint of a 
shepherd, might have been written by a Greek idyllic 
poet and illustrated by Bocklin. Again and again he 
repeats the teaching of Horace to enjoy as long as one 
can enjoy, and the summons to live without whims and 
cares, to crown beakers and to enjoy life with song and 
dance; for so sounds the melancholy refrain: "One 
cannot know what the morrow will bring." 

In these works repose the thoughts to which painters 
gave pictorial form. No remembrance of the suffering 
Nazarene and of bleeding martyrs should bring a false 
note into this Arcadian blessedness; but only idyllic 
pictures of Hellenic mythology, pleasing to the senses, 
were suitable for the villas which these sesthetes erected 
as oases in the desert of every-day life. A quite new 
variety of Arcadian and bucolic painting was created. 
For all those pictures which Lorenzo had painted for 
his villas, Signorelli's Pan as well as Botticelli's 
Spring and Birth of Venus, have nothing in com- 
mon with the antique which Mantegna cherished. 
The latter was a great scholar who by means of science 
transplanted himself into antiquity, and who by the 
most careful study of costume and arms sought to 
reconstruct the epoch in an archaeological manner. 
The painters of Lorenzo's circle might have done this 
also: for in the extensive gardens of San Marco whole 
rows of statues were erected along the avenues of trees, 


J 


152 IRature an& Bntique 

and in the collections of Lorenzo hundreds of Greek 
vases and antique gems were preserved. What, 
however, they wished to depict was not the antique, but 
a Saturnian age, in which man, rejoicing in the senses, 
lived in unbroken joyful existence in blessed unity 
with nature. While Mantegna saw the antique world 
with the eyes of Menzel, they gazed at it as did Bocklin 
and Puvis de Chavannes. The land of the Greeks 
which the Paduan had sought with his intelligence, 
they sought with the soul, and would have said about 
Mantegna what Bocklin said of Menzel, "He is a great 
scholar." On the one hand a clear and intelligent 
classicism, on the other a romanticism flying from 
actuality into a dreamy Hellas as to a blessed shore, 
to repose in the land of poesy, and afterwards bring 
home sweet sentiments and beautiful pictures. 

As these works revealed the spiritual, so Ghirlan- 
dajo's paintings reflect the external garb of the epoch. 
Although they seemingly portray biblical subjects, they 
are in truth only a glorification of a great age; when, 
as the inscription says, "Our most beautiful city of 
Florence, renowned for its riches, arts and buildings, 
lived in prosperity, health and peace." The thought 
that he was painting biblical subjects never seems to 
have entered Ghirlandajo's mind, in his commission 
from Lorenzo's cousin Giovanni Tornabuoni to paint 
the cycle of frescoes in the choir of Santa Maria Novella. 
He paints only the world which he sees about him, 
and in the festal garment of pleasure. The Florence of 


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Xoren30 tbe /iDaonificent 153 

those days in its sincerity, its distinguished renown 
and its nobiHty of culture is immortalised in these paint- 
ings. One witnesses the pompous display of ecclesias- 
tical pageantry, sees how marriages were celebrated, 
and is introduced into the lying-in room of a Florentine 
patrician lady. Other ladies with a worldly air, the 
creme of the Florentine aristrocacy, come to visit; very 
piquant with their irregular but delicate faces and their 
brocaded, dignified costume. Marble friezes, such as 
the Robbias had created, adorn the walls of the room. 
It must have been an event when all Florence streamed 
to see the portraits of these well known beauties, and to 
admire the ladies of the houses of Tornabuoni and 
Tornaquinci, Sassetti and Medici. 

We must also thank Ghirlandajo for his faithfulness 
in portraying the culture of the age. It is his gift to 
us that the whole epoch stands so tangible and full of 
life before our eyes; and his pictures have the same 
interest as a lecture on the culture of the age of the 
Magnifico. But his artistic qualities also are impres- 
sive. While Gozzoli, who laboured in the same manner 
a generation earlier, did not rise above the level of a 
clever illustrator, in Ghirlandajo's pictures there is a 
great historic trend. There, easy complacency; here, 
a clear, serious composition and monumental dignity. 
Whereas Gozzoli, with relief-like breadth, overloads his 
mural surfaces with such a number of details that one 
interferes with the other, with Ghirlandajo a simple, 
forceful space composition prevails. He has developed 


154 IRatnre an^ Bnttque 

Benozzo's waggish chatter into a well-written oration, 
and clarified his naive juxtaposition of single episodes 
into a classical lapidary style. 

On the other hand this change involves no great 
personal service on the part of Ghirlandajo. The reason 
for his superiority consists merely in the fact that while 
Gozzoli could only avail himself of the achievements 
of Masaccio, Uccello and Castagno, Ghirlandajo had 
at his disposal those of a wider period. He is a greater 
space composer, because Piero della Francesca had 
created the laws of space composition; more dignified 
and simpler because Pollajuolo had taught the Floren- 
tines a sense for monumental simplicity. His figures 
have a corporal and not a flat, geometrical effect, like 
those of Gozzoli, because Verrocchio had taught the 
methods of achieving plasticity of form. The cast of 
his draperies and the antique monuments and ornaments 
which he uses in the background and as decorative ac- 
cessories, are of a classical purity of style, because he 
had seen Rome, and because since the publication of 
Mantegna's line engravings the study of draperies had 
been systematically carried on in Florence. Sometimes 
he even surprises us with intimate details, with flowers 
and animals — because Hugo van der Goes had awak- 
ened taste for these things. Ghirlandajo made use of 
the entire capital in art that the age had collected, 
and availed himself of everything that the great in- 
vestigators had established. While this raises him 
above Gozzoli, it also shows that Gozzoli signifies the 


3Loren30 tbe /IDaonificent 155 

termination of an epoch. For as often as an epoch of 
art approaches its end the eclair eurs are followed by 
the profiteurs, who, instead of attempting new things, 
merely collect what has been already achieved. 

In other respects as well, no further progress was 
possible along the path taken by Ghirlandajo. How- 
ever much gratitude is due him for having transmitted 
with documentary fidelity a picture of that great age, 
it is nevertheless questionable whether the legends of 
John and Mary are a proper pretext for furnishing con- 
temporary fashion plates. Religious feeling is no 
longer to be found in his paintings; the last vestige of 
piety which the fourteenth century had retained is 
eliminated. Even the legend of St. Francis which 
Giotto had painted with such serious sublimity becomes 
in Ghirlandajo's hands a representation of ecclesiastical 
ceremonies and architectural scenes. The Paul \^ero- 
nese of the quattrocento, he has rendered biblical 
subjects in a more worldly style than any of his pre- 
decessors. While even in Gozzoli's works there still 
exists a story-telling sentiment, a certain rustic 
patriarchal air suitable for biblical themes, with 
Ghirlandajo they have become social episodes of the 
salon and worldly representations of society. By his 
well-known expression of regret that, after he had 
acquired a mastery of this kind of art, he could not 
decorate the entire city walls of Florence, he has him- 
self betrayed how purely superficial his conception of 
his profession was. 


156 IHatme anb Bntiqne 

Although in his altar-pieces the transhition of biblical 
into modern subjects is less conspicuous, they offer a 
logical commentary of this transformation. They are 
able, but prosaic, sober and crude. An experienced 
business man, he carried on the painting of altar- 
pieces as a factory owner would have done, never 
refusing a commission. This explains why his works 
possess neither psychic qualities nor colouristic charm. 
Glaring red and blue colours, fresh from the tube, stand 
side by side. Pictures which for Fiesole would have 
been soul-confessions are for Ghirlandajo articles of 
commerce, which he executes with the help of his 
apprentices, as well as may be, in his shop. 

it is easy to understand how, in an age no longer 
possessing Christian ideals, whose choice spirits made 
pilgrimages into the land of the Hellenes, religious 
painting also acquired the same mundane or else a 
purely manufactured character. It is impressive to 
find a view of life which no longer recognised a Christian 
heaven expressing itself with such candour. But one 
also understands why, in consequence of the store of 
religious feeling which still existed, such an art as 
Ghirlandajo's must be followed by the severest reaction. 


Chapter nil 

Ubc IReliGious IReactton 

If. Savonarola 

" Di donian non e ceitezza." 

LORENZO himself had still to experience this. 
When at the close of his life he wrote his Laudi, 
a strange change had transformed him. The 
exuberant poet of the carnival songs discusses the 
gloomy problem of human fate, demands to know 
the wherefore of life, speaks of the evil hours of an 
inner void and of the pale terror that affrights the soul. 
It was in such a moment of inner void that he 
sent from his sick-bed in the Villa Careggi to the 
cloister of San Marco to summon the Domin- 
ican prior Girolamo Savonarola to console him 
and grant absolution. At the death-bed of the 
favourite of the Graces the great reformer stood 
long and silently — a gloomy, threatening phantom, 
transfixing the dying man with his eagle eye — 
then turned away and departed without granting 
absolution. 

157 


158 Ubc IRelfgimis IReactton 

The years of theocratic rule have now dawned. 
The Platonism of the aristocratic circles could not 
satisfy the feelings, and repletion reigned after the long 
intoxicating dream of beauty; a burning desire for 
salvation after earthly pleasures, and puritanical 
fanaticism after the cult of the senses and the pleasure- 
loving epicureanism of the past. Savanarola belonged 
to those rare men who come at the right hour. The 
same little monastery of San Marco, where in Fiesole's 
time St. Antoninus had laboured, now became once 
more the bulwark of Christianity. The ideas of asceti- 
cism and renunciation which at that time only existed 
in narrow monastic circles were carried by Savonarola 
to the passionately excited masses. To the enticing 
ideals of antiquity, the siren song of sensual pleasure and 
of antique beauty, he opposed the power of a thousand 
years of ecclesiastical traditions and the gloomy passion 
of a religious life. As early as January, 1491, Savo- 
narola had begun his penitential sermons in Santa 
Maria del Fiore, and in a few months Florence was 
changed. Like a storm his inspired word fell upon the 
pleasure-loving masses. It seemed as if a prophet 
from on high had come down from heaven to call the 
luxurious city to penance and contrition. Ecclesiastical 
processions took the place of worldly festivals, and 
exuberant carnival songs were succeeded by spiritual 
hymns of praise. The number of his adherents in- 
creased daily. Even though the Pope threatened 
excommunication and the aristocratic circles raged 


Savonarola 159 

against the demagogue, with the cry "Viva Cristo" the 
electrified masses surged about, and dervish-like scenes 
reminding one of the processions of Flagellants in the 
middle ages began. The house of Medici no longer 
reigned; but Jesus Christ, populi Floreniini decreto 
creatus, was in proper person King and Lord Protector 
of Florence. The Auto da je of vanities arranged 
for the carnival of 1497, probably marks the summit 
of his activity as an agitator. Thirteen hundred 
children, marching from house to house, demanded 
and collected the tinsel of this world. Silken clothes 
and musical instruments, carpets and editions of the 
Decamerone, antique authors and mythological pictures 
— all were piled into a high pyramid, and the smoke 
mounted to heaven. Women and maidens crowned 
with olive branches danced around the blazing 
pile in mystic ecstasy, offering rings, bracelets, 
or whatever ornaments they possessed to the 
flames. A daemonic, hypnotic power must have 
proceeded from the great zealot; for even Miran- 
dola, the friend of the Magnifico, relates that he 
trembled and his hair stood on end, when listening 
to one of the fanatical sermons of the Dominican 
friar. 

Against art too he hurled his ban: "Aristotle, 
who was a heathen, says in his Poetics that immodest 
figures should not be painted, lest children be corrupted 
by the sight. What shall 1 then say to you, ye Christ- 
ian painters, who expose half-nude figures to the eye? 

VOL. I.— i; 


i6o Zbc IRelioious IReaction 

That is a thing of evil which must cease. But ye who 
possess such paintings, destroy them or paint them 
over and ye will then do a work pleasing to God and the 
Blessed Virgin." As he thundered against the repre- 

v/ sentation of the nude, so he protested against the 
introduction of contemporary portraits into religious 
paintings: "The figures which ye have painted in your 
church are the figures of your gods. Nevertheless, 
young people may say when they meet this or 
that person, 'This is Magdalen, that is St. John.' 
For the pictures of your wantons ye cause to 
be painted as saints in the churches, thus drag- 
ging that which is divine into the dust, and bring- . 
ing vanity into the house of the Eternal One. 
Think ye that the Virgin Mary was so clothed as 
ye paint her? I say unto you, that she wore the 
clothes of the poor, but ye paint her as a woman of 
the streets." 

The injury done to art by this great ecclesiastical 
reaction, which changed the new Athens into a second 
Geneva, as intolerant as the capital of Calvin, has 

" often been described. If the representations of the 
antique in the fifteenth century never progressed 
beyond beginnings, and the gods of Greece for whom 
Lorenzo prepared a home had again to flee from Italy, 
this is entirely due to the teaching of Savonarola. In 
consequence of his zeal against contemporary portraits 
and modern costume, the wholesome relation of art 
to life was lost. On the other hand, he offered a 


Savonarola i6i 

substitute for that which he destroyed and gave back 
to art what she had lost in the days of Lorenzo: her 
Christian ideals, which he showed in a light which 
made them seem to have become quite new. When in 
his sermons he speaks of the maternal love of Mary, 
of her timid prophetic soul, gazing with a pathetic 
glance into the future, when he describes her as a som- 
nambulist living from day to day in painful anticipation 
of a coming fate, or represents her as a poor, simple 
maiden unable to comprehend the mercy shown her 
in being the chosen of heaven — all these things reveal 
the far deeper ideal of the Madonna with which he 
inspired painters. " Beautiful alone is the beauty of 
the soul. Behold a pious person, whether man or 
woman, who is inspired of the Holy Ghost; observe him 
when he prays and a heavenly inspiration seizes him; 
then ye shall see the beauty of God beaming from his 
face, and his features will have the expression of an 
angel." In such words a whole new programme for 
art was given. And the artists, each after his own 
fashion, took sides in regard to the preacher of penance. 
For one he was an evil demon, for another the Holy 
Ghost; this one he robbed of his ideals, that one he 
assisted to discover himself. Standing in the midst 
of these passionate disturbances, art also was shaken 
by the spiritual fever which streamed through the 
veins of the whole people. 


i62 XTbe IReliaious IReactton 

nil. iplcro J)i Coslmo 

For Piero di Cosimo, Savonarola proved an evil 
genius; for he destroyed his world of fables and 
drove him from the enchanted domain which he 
had built for himself in gleaming splendour: where 
fabulous beings glided through the air; where stately 
knights and captive princesses, three-headed gaints, and 
enchanted heathen deities frightened and loved, fought 
and teased each other. If any one, then, Piero di 
Cosimo is the true child of the age of the Magnifico, 
the kindred spirit of those bucolic poets who played 
with the ancient myths with such a coy and gracious 
charm. 

Although usually accounted a pupil of the dull and 
clumsy Cosimo Roselli, he was in reality a follower of 
Hugo van der Goes. From him he acquired the sense 
of rusticity and of beautiful luminous colours, his taste 
for the intimate observation of plant and animal life, 
and his pleasure in sunlight playing upon faces, flowers, 
and clothes. Especially characteristic for the Nether- 
landish spirit of his art is the Berlin picture of the 
Adoration of the Shepherds. No festal splendour, 
but rather a rustic charm pervades the representation. 
Mary folds her hands devoutly; a coarse-grained 
shepherd, with a little goat under his arm, raises his 
great greyish-yellow hat. A sunbeam strikes his 
weather-browned face, light brown coat, and bluish- 
gray hose. The landscape is simple and modest in 


plero M Coslmo 163 

design, and bathed in even light; and the pale green or 
delicate yellow leaves of the lofty trees stand out 
daintily against the blue firmament. The rustic 
character of the picture is further heightened by a 
heap of vegetables, the thatched roof of the hut, and 
the powerful animals. 

This primitive, yet confidential manner, which has 
nothing in common with the light elegance of the 
Italians, pervades also his other works. A Madonna 
in the Louvre looks more like a Dutch market woman 
than an Italian picture of the Virgin. A simple peasant 
woman in plain, homely clothes, she wears a striped 
light blue head-dress, tucked under her chin and knotted 
at the ends— a delightfully artistic motive which never 
occurs in Italian paintings. In the foreground a white 
dove and a book bound in red are arranged quite in the 
manner of Flemish still-life. In other paintings he 
is occupied with the analysis of light. Quite in the 
sense of Ghirlandajo he has given in his Magdalen the 
portrait of a richly dressed young lady. But this lady 
stands at the window, through which the sunlight 
floods the room, enveloping the figure in bright light; 
gleaming upon her cheeks, skipping over her hair, 
glimmering upon pearls and rubies, and refracting 
in a thousand colours upon her dark green dress. 
Other Flemish traits are the use of the three-quarter 
instead of the Italian profile view, and the still- 
life, consisting of salve-box, paper, and book, which 
he has grouped upon the window-sill. The window- 


i64 Ubc 1ReUGfou5 IReactlon 

sill is very skilfully used to exhibit the third 
dimension and to increase the plastic impression of 
space. 

In other pictures again he charms by his close ob- 
servation of animal and vegetable life. In the Adoraiion 
of ihe Christ-child, painted for Lorenzo de' Medici, 
a brooklet ripples over the pebbles; a starling sits near 
a tree trunk, and in the foreground flowers sparkle in 
the green grass of the meadow. There is hardly a 
picture of his in which animals do not occur; such as 
pigs, rabbits, or pigeons, ducks, cranes, or swans. He 
is everywhere recognisable by the botanical faithfulness 
with which he paints palm and olive trees, clusters of 
myrtle, heads of grain, tulips, primroses, and daisies. 
Yet, with all this richness of detail, his landscapes 
are impressive by reason of their broad and distant 
views and their mighty simple line. One feels 
that he did not adorn nature, as the earlier painters 
had done, but, like Goes, portrayed her as a simple 
analyser. 

The impression made by his paintings is confirmed 
by what we know of his life. Vasari relates that he 
always locked himself in his workshop and would not 
permit others to see him paint; which shows to what 
extent he considered himself a technical experimenter, 
and was conscious that he had discovered Goes's secrets 
of colour, which he wished to preserve as his own 
property — just as Leonardo used backhand writing in 
order to guard his manuscripts from unwelcome eyes. 


Ipiero ^t Cosimo 165 

Vasari further relates that Piero would not suffer 
any one to cut the fruit in his garden, but let the grape 
vines grow wild, maintaining that we should let nature 
take her own course rather than endeavour to make 
something else out of her. This reminds us of Bous- 
seau's theory that everything is good just as it has 
sprung from the lap of nature, the mother of all, and 
at the same time shows the cause of the realism of his 
landscapes, which also reproduce nature without 
"desecrating by improvement." It is further related 
that Piero lived only on eggs; and even this abstinence, 
seemingly the caprice of an eccentric spirit, is closely 
connected with the pantheistic views of the master, who 
was such a friendly observer of animals, and, after 
Goes, created the first important animal-pieces in 
modern art. 

But this habit of intimate observation is only one 
side of Piero's nature; hand in hand with it goes a trend 
towards the fantastic. The same man who observed 
nature with such a bright and acute eye also listened 
for the sound of lost melodies, soft and low. Weird 
beings appeared to him, fantastic yet serious; and the 
figures of the legends, mounted upon strange animals, 
glide through space. A fabulous hippogriflf carries him 
into lost worlds of beauty, to Greece, the Orient, and 
Utopia. VThis youth," says Vasari, "was blessed by 
nature with much intelligence and was very different in 
his strange notions from the other young people who 
worked at the same time with Cosimo Roselli. Often 


x66 tlhc IReltotous IRcaction 

when he wished to relate something it seemed as if he 
suddenly no longer knew what he was talking about, 
and he had to bsgin anew because his mind had in the 
meanwhile become occupied with quite different things. 
At the same time he was so fond of solitude that he only 
felt comfortable when he could go about alone, devoting 
himself to fantastic thoughts and building air castles." i 
From this and the succeeding description it is evident 
that, long before Leonardo, he had followed the advice 
which the latter gave to young artists in his treatise 
on painting: "If thou hast a situation to invent, 
thou canst behold strange things in clouds and 
weather-beaten walls: beautiful landscapes adorned 
with mountains, views, cliffs, trees, great plains, 
valleys, and hills. Thou canst see all kinds of 
battles there, dramatic positions, strange figures, 
faces, and clothes. In viewing such walls and mix- 
tures the same thing occurs as in listening to the 
sound of bells, in the peals of which thou wilt again 
fmd every name and every word which thou dost 
imagine." 

Piero's talent for the fantastic revealed itself earliest 
in the carnival processions which he arranged for the 
aristocratic young gentlemen of Florence. Vasari 
relates that he designed entire triumphal processions, 
with music and verses which had been made for this 
purpose. There were men on horseback and on foot 

' Vv'hile the author's translation of Vasari is not a literal one, it 
embodies the entire sense of the original in better and briefer form. — Ed. 


Iptero M Coslmo 1^.7 

and everything was of incredible pomp, the clothes 
corresponding strictly with the picture represented. 
It was beautiful to see at night about thirty horses 
mounted by knights in magnificent costumes, each 
one attended by six or eight pages, lance in hand, and 
then the triumphal chariot adorned with trophies and 
fantastic ornaments. At a time when painting was still 
practically confined to the traditional religious sub- 
jects, fantasies could only fmd vent in such ephemeral 
representations. Through the journey to Rome, which 
in 1482 he made in company with his teacher Roselli, 
this trend towards the fantastic was guided into a firm 
course. The radiant and wonderful antique world and 
the charm of the ancient legend were revealed to him. 
His imagination, which formerly had not known how 
to occupy itself or what course to take, now found a 
sure aim. The antique world was for him a lost, en- 
chanted kingdom, where witchcraft and love, adventure 
and knighthood reigned. He leads us into the deep 
forest where satyrs and nymphs dwell; to the seashore 
where courageous knights fight against dragons to 
release captive princesses. Sometimes the prevail- 
ing note of his pictures is the coy, jesting tone 
which laughs from Boccaccio's Genealogia Deoriim ; 
at others the romantic longing which echoes from 
the verses of the Magnifico; then again a very 
modern feeling, reminding of Lohengrin or Nickel- 
mann. 

Like an antique legend set to Offenbach's music is the 


1 68 Ube tReltoious IReaction 

effect of his picture which, following Poliziano's 
Silvae, portrays the Finding of Hylas. A nymph has 
found the handsome youth, the favourite of Hercules, 
in a flowery meadow; and like dogs scenting the game 
all the maidens hurry to the scene to admire the nude 
boy. Each one wants him for herself. One brings 
him flowers, another fruits, a third a little dog; another 
is so fascinated with the sight that, stopping with 
wide-spread limbs, her hands on her thighs, she stares 
at the lad like one crazed and in her excitement drops 
all the flowers. The fat Tritons, gazing on the bathing 
Naiads in Bocklin's Play of the Waves do not look more 
astonished than Piero's nymphs. His Venus and Mars 
in Berlin is a shepherd's idyl of mischievous charm. 
Cupids play with the armour of Mars, and doves lock 
bills; a red butterfly has lighted on the knee of Venus, 
and a little rabbit nestling to her intelligently pricks its 
ears, as if sniffing the perfume of her body. In the 
picture of the Liberation of Andromeda, Perseus, with 
yellow cuirass, blue tabard, fluttering sash, and red 
hose, flies through the air like a burlesque Lohengrin, 
and the dragon clumsily coils itself like a primeval 
Fafner. 

According to Vasari, Piero for a long time laboured 
exclusively with such subjects. He had found the 
true direction for his activity, and was inexhaustible 
in the invention of fabulous monsters and strange 
hobgoblins. Centaurs and satyrs storm about, Lapithse 
struggle, and Prometheus brings down fire from 


piero N Coaimo 169 

heaven. In his fantasy the whole space of the earth is 
peopled with spirits, and the air with legions of strange 
beings. It seemed as if, after a thousand years slumber, 
old Pan had awakened again. Probably the most beauti- 
ful of these subjects is the Dead Procris in London, a 
lovely ideal of Bocklinesque charm. Her tender body 
lies upon a sweet-scented, blooming meadow, and a 
faun kneels beside her, unable to believe that the 
daughter of Erechtheus is dead. Silently he bends 
over, seeking to raise her head, and glances into her 
eyes. The picture is pervaded by a romantic Hellen- 
ism and a deep melancholy. Not only the dog, her 
faithful guardian, sitting near, but the very landscape 
mourns; like the branches of a weeping willow the 
shrubbery hangs down. Piero, the merry knave, has 
become serious and thoughtful: one almost believes 
that in the mourning faun he has painted himself, 
and in the dead Procris his art. 

For when the penitential sermons of Savonarola 
thundered, it was all over with the joyful fables. Gay 
antiquity was again followed by the gloomy middle age, 
and merry sensual pleasure by sanguinary asceticism. 
Although he even tried it for a time, Piero, the heathen, 
could not accommodate himself to the change. The 
Holy Family in Dresden is probably his first concession 
to the Dominican. His landscape, formerly flowery, 
has become rocky and desolate, and bare trees stretch 
their branches towards heaven. St. John, formerly 
the playfellow of the Christ-child, now timidly 


lyo TLbc IReltGious "IReaction 

approaches him with the cross; mighty angels' wings, 
indistinct as clouds, spread over the landscape. In the 
Immaculate Conception of the Florentine Academy he 
even rises to a great achievement in the sense of the 
new spiritualism. The very theme shows the spirit 
of the Counter-reformation casting its shadow before, 
being the first representation of the incident to the 
glorification of which Murillo afterwards dedicated 
his art. in this painting the heads are full of ecstatic 
devotion, and he has actually succeeded in attaining 
the pitch of religious excitement which thrilled the age. 
But this excitement did not last long. Although he 
lived to paint many religious pictures, his personality 
was lost. At one time it is Signorelli, at another 
Leonardo or Fra Bartolommeo whom he imitates, and 
he feels that his labour is forced. The moment he no 
longer expresses himself he is no longer the peer of 
the others. He begins his panels in discouragement, 
to end them either in a forced manner or not at all. 
Under the pretext of painting portraits he occasionally 
ventures upon a modest excursion into his old domain: 
like his uncanny Cleopatra, the nude woman with the 
oriental shawl, about whose necklace a greenish-yellow 
snake is curled. But one feels that a man in whose 
soul a chord had snapped painted this picture; so shrill 
is the dissonance between the tropical, exuberant char- 
acter of Cleopatra and the desolate hungry landscape 
with the withered trees presented as a background; 
so devilish is the contrast between this pale profile 


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172 Zbc IReltatous IReaction 

opened, and skeletons appeared wrapped in black 
grave-clothes upon which the bones and ribs had been 
painted so naturally that one shuddered to behold it. 
Then shrill trumpet blasts sounded, at which the dead 
half arose from their coffins, sat up and with wailing" 
voices sang: 'Dolor, pianto e penitenzia.' Behind the 
chariot dead men rode upon horses which he had 
carefully selected from the leanest in the city. Upon 
the black covers, white crosses were painted. Every 
man had four pages, who were also dressed as dead, 
carrying in their hands black lances and great black 
standards adorned with crosses and death heads. 
Other corpses, clad in black cloth, marched beside the 
chariot singing with wailing voices, 'Miserere mei, 
deus.'" 

Although he lived ten years longer no one was heard 
to speak of Piero after this. He even dismissed his 
pupils. He painted many pictures, like the representa- 
tion from the Legend of Andromeda in the Uffizi, but 
they were only works executed to kill time; joyless 
repetitions, drawn with trembling hand, of that which 
he had portrayed with such charming spirit in his youth. 
When it rained he would go out into the street to ob- 
serve how the raindrops sprinkled the earth: such, he 
said, was human fate. . When a storm came he would 
sit in the corner of the room, trembling as if pursued by 
spirits. Misanthropic, friendless, and neglected, he 
lived on, a fantastic without means of existence, 
awaiting death. Only when he heard the church bells 


pieroMCoslmo 171 

and black masses of clouds which gather behind it. 
The portraits of the musician Francesco Giamberti 
and the architect Giuliano da Sangallo at the Hague 
also belong to this period. They were surely no 
commissions, but the portraits of friends; embittered 
■people with whom he, like Gottfried Keller, associated 
in the evening over a fiasco of Chianti, to denounce 
the change of times: Giuliano gazing with dull, imbecile 
eye, and the other a toothless old idealist, who has 
angrily cocked his great cap over one ear. The land- 
scape is so little suitable to the allegorical accessories, 
that one would imagine he had painted these heads 
over previous landscape studies. 

The life-blood of his art had been sapped by Savo- 
narola. The Christian ideals which had again become 
omnipotent left no room for fantasy. The figures of 
the saints had again to be painted in accordance with 
the strict canons that had for centuries prevailed. 
But once more his old pleasure in carnival processions 
awakened, and he resolved to express himself freely in 
mummeries. The carnival procession which he de- 
signed in 1507 brought for the last time his name on 
every tongue. But what had Savonarola made of 
the jolly Piero! The procession exhibited, as Vasari 
relates, "the triumphant chariot of Death drawn by 
buffaloes, quite black and painted with bones and 
white crosses. The figure of Death, scythe in hand, 
was seated upon it, and coffins followed. When the 
procession paused and sang, the lids of the coffins 


174 XTbe IRelioious IReaction 

objectivity reigning about him. The works of the 
older painters are sensible, sober, and clear, his are 
full of ecstatic emotion and dreams; a romanticism 
which, longing for the home of the soul, flies back to the 
middle age, strong in belief, and weaves about it all the 
charms of mysticism. 

Three pictures in the Uffizi — La Forte{{a, a small 
Judith, and the Finding of the Body of Holof ernes — and 
also the St. Sebastian in the Berlin Gallery show how, 
beginning as a pupil of Pollajuolo, he nevertheless 
differed from him in the soft, melancholy trend of his 
art. Similarly, while strictly following in several 
Madonnas the types of his teachers, he differs from them 
in that he never introduces genre subjects or jolly 
episodes, but conceives his paintings as the bearers of 
y symbolic thoughts. The Madonna looks thoughtfully 
upon the crown of thorns and the nails, which the 
Christ-child innocently, unsuspectingly holds, or else a 
curly-haired angel offers her grapes and ears of wheat, 
the symbol of the sacrifice. In the place of the fresh 
worldliness of Fra FilippO; Botticelli's works reveal 
the presence of a mystic and transcendental, a solemn 
and sacramental element. While the reaHsts in their 
Madonnas portray the joys of motherhood, Botticelli's 
know no joy whatever. Mary appears gloomy and 
lost in thought, as if, even when she presses the Christ- 
child to her bosom, a foreboding of coming suffering 
casts its shadow over her soul. But generally the 
artist quite removes her into the heavenly spheres, 


:JBotticelU I7S 

and he is more solemn and effective with the mediceval 
theme of the Queen of Heaven, Saintly men, 
solemn and severe as Durer's Four Apostles, assemble, 
like the protectors of the Holy Grail, around her throne; 
or else angels draw back the curtains of the baldachin 
and place the crown upon her head. In these paintings, 
so different in their solemn contemplative feeling from 
the joyful prosaic art of Filippo, his teacher, all re- 
miniscences of earlier forms have also disappeared. 
A new type of the Madonna, independently created by 
Botticelli, enters the domain of art. She is no longer 
the mother, but a pale, thoughtful maiden, who seems 
only to be in the world to pine away like an unopened 
bud, and of such a silent melancholy as if the end of the 
earth were nigh. No joy in life, no sunshine and no 
hope is left. Pale and quivering are her lips, and a 
tired, world-v/eary expression plays about her mouth. 
In the eyes of the Christ-child, too, a secret dawns, as 
if foreboding the purpose for which it was chosen. 
This is no playful child, but the Saviour of the world, 
solemnly blessing or looking thoughtfully upward as if 
under an inspiration. Even the angels, unlike Fra 
Filippo's self-willed boys, here performed their office in 
contemplative solemnity; not playfellows of the 
Christ-child but prophetic beings, who gaze with deep 
pity upon the world of sorrows, and dedicate with 
longing devotion and timid hesitation their services 
to the Son of God. 

In the manner, also, in which he treats costume and 


176 XTbe IRelioious IReactton 

uses flowers to heighten the sentiment, he has more in 
common with the irecenio than with his reaHstic con- 
temporaries. Instead of clothing the Madonna in the 
fashionable costume of the day, he envelops her in a 
great mantle, decked with flowers and adorned with 
gold and lace, which alone suffices to give the impression 
of elaborate solemnity. For the clothing of the angels 
he reverts to the Greek chiton, to which he adds articles 
selected from the ancient ecclesiastical garb: the 
alb, stole, and amice. Entire still-life scenes, composed 
of fruits and flowers, and artistic niches of cypress 
branches and thick palm leaves envelop the figures; 
and the angels press forward bedecked with wreaths 
of roses; bearing vases, candles, and lily stalks. He 
only needs to apply the brush, and we are transported 
into a wide and lofty cathedral where the odor of 
incense mounts to heaven and a thousand great white 
candles flicker. We see solemn processions with 
flower-decked baldachins marching across the floor 
strewn with roses, and hear the silvery voices of 
children singing the praises of the Infinite One, 

The Magnificat, which, to the contemplative delight 
of thousands, hangs in a gallery of honour in the Uffizi, 
and the Madonna of the Palms in the Berlin Museum 
are the most characteristic examples of such works. 
The former has such an unspeakable character of 
grandeur and sublimity that the beholder fancies he 
is listening to the mighty, solemn tones of an organ 
mingling with angel choirs. The word "Magnificat,'' 


SANDRO BOTTICELLI 



THE MAGXIFICAT 

Uffizi Gallery, Florence 


3Bottlcelli 177 

which the Madonna is writing, sounds through the 
whole painting. The BerHn picture owes to its floral 
decoration the solemn and festal effect. An arbour of 
palms, from the dark leaves of which white blooming 
myrtle gleams, forms the vault above the pale, maidenly 
Mary, while the sweet perfume of roses, lilies, and in- 
numerable flowers fills the air about. The whole 
psychology of the perfume of flowers, which we are 
so fond of claiming for the nineteenth century, was 
anticipated by Botticelli. All those rose-crowned 
angels approaching the Blessed One, bearing lighted 
candles wound about with flowers, or holding with 
hieratic stiffness the long stalks of lilies in their white 
trembling hands — while admiring them in the paintings 
of Burne-Jones, we often forget that they originated 
with Botticelli. 

A fresco of this period, St. Augustine, in the 
church of Oganissanti, often shows how different his 
taste is from that of a realist. While in the pendant 
representing St. Jerome Ghirlandajo has simply at- 
tired an elderly Florentine gentleman as a saint, Bot- 
ticelli's Augustine gazes with the eyes of a visionary 
into the distance, his hands pressed upon his breast, 
as if to control his excitement over the revelation 
which he has just received. His frescoes in the Sistine 
Chapel are no paintings, but learned discussions and 
interpretations of theological wisdom, hardly excelled 
in their severe dogmatism by the works of the Domini- 
can painters of the fourteenth century. In the midst 


178 XTbe IReltotous IReaction 

of an art which hated everything symboHc, which 
depicted not thoughts but actuahties, and which never 
wished to invent, but observe and relate, BotticeUi 
stands alone as a thinker v/ho has much in common 
with the art of the trecento, so rich in ideals, as with 
the heavy thoughtfulness of the German Cornelius. 

1 hat such a sensitive and impressionable mind could 
not remain untouched by the splendour of the antique 
world, is a matter of course. However little his style 
may have been influenced by the antique — for there 
is nothing less antique than these slender forms, 
these restless, ruffled and puffed draperies — his back- 
grounds, nevertheless, betray the enthusiasm with 
which he studied the remains of antiquity. From 
the time of his stay at Rome, ancient buildings, 
sculptures, and gems occur frequently in his works. 
In one of his frescoes of the Sistine Chapel he has 
painted the arch of Constantine and in the background 
of another the group of the Disocuri of the Quirinal. 
The portrait of a young girl in the Frankfort Museum 
wears as a necklace an antique gem carved with the 
images of Apollo and Marsyas. At that time every 
heathen temple and triumphal arch had a particular 
legend; and it was just this mystery enveloping the 
antique which attracted a dreamer and a brooder 
Hke Botticelli. 

When he returned to Florence the harvest of human- 
ism was ripe. He entered the circles of the aesthetes 
collected about the Magnifico, and was for several 


Botticello 179 

years a guest in Lorenzo's house, dining at his table. 
Most of his mythological pictures were painted for 
the Villa Careggi. It is principally of these works, 
painted for the Medici, that we think when Botticelli's 
name is mentioned. Everybody knows that from 
these entrancing paintings is wafted a perfume of 
youth, purity, and grace, identifying Botticelli himself 
with the springtime which in the principal one he 
glorified. In his Pallas the head of the goddess, with 
its soft full outlines and long wavy hair, is of such 
radiant beauty and so different from the harsh type 
of Simonetta, which usually recurs in his works, that 
one thinks of the transcendental sweetness of Leonardo 
da Vinci. In the figures of his remaining paintings 
the grace of slenderness prevails, together with a certain 
dreamy and transfigured expression which heightens 
the mysterious effect. If his Birth of Venus had been 
painted thirty years later by the clever decorators of 
Rome or Venice, they would have painted geniuses 
fluttering through the air, gods reclining in the clouds, 
and all Olympus in a state of commotion, and the result 
would have been a picture like Raphael's Triumph 
of Galatea. Botticelli, on the other hand, develops the 
sentiment from the landscape, the wide and endless 
ocean, upon whose quietly rippling waves the Cyprian 
goddess is wafted like a fair dreamland picture. The 
ringing of bells, the song of voices, and the rustling 
of garments is in the air; a longing, dreamy feeling 
pervades the entire earth. 


i8o XLbc IRelloious IRcaction 

A midsummer night's dream has taken form in his 
Primaiera, with its nymph-Hke graceful beings which 
seem Hke an anticipation of Bockhn. BotticelH was the 
first to see the elves dance. Slender Dryads who housed 
in a thicket of the wood beside bubbling springs, 
have come to take part in the dance of spring. It is 
wonderful how in these paintings also he uses flowers 
to enhance the effect, Olive branches encircle Pallas 
and crown her head, and in the Birth of Melius the 
mantle of the Hour is decked with flowers of spring, 
and the wind god strews roses in the air. In the Pri. 
mavera oranges and myrtles shimmer; golden fruits and 
white blossoms gleam from the dark foliage.^ Like the 
Sleeping Beauty of the fable, Primavera is enveloped 
with wild roses; flowers of the meadow encompass her 
neck; blue cornflowers and white primroses are en- 
twined in her fair hair. Buds of the springtime, 
anemones, tulips, and narcissus, she lightly scatters 
over the earth. Botticelli appears as a perfectly 
charming mannerist in his treatment of draperies, 
these transparent veils and fluttering bands. None 
before him used such fine gauze draperies, clinging 
tightly to the limbs and clearly revealing the flower- 
like forms. 
And yet, however magically beautiful these pictures 

' The Birth of yciiiis is now in the Florentine Academy, and 
Pnmavera Js in the Uffizi Gallery. In an excellent monograph, 
Gebiirt dcr yenus uiid Fn'ihluig (Hamburg ^nd Leipzig, 1893), Dr. 
Warburg has shown that the latter picture was painted after a poem 
by Poliziano, entitled the Realm of Venus which is also the more 
correct title for the painting. — Ed. 





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are, even though they be the finest survivals of that 
glorious day in which the gods of Greece were called 
from exile, there is nevertheless something lacking, a 
dissonance between the joyous fables which he relates 
and the style in which he does it. The poetry of 
Lorenzo il Magnifico and of Poliziano, which gave the 
inspiration for these works, is pervaded by the love 
of pleasure and an epicurean joyfulness; it is a poesy 
of sensual Arcadian souls who have quite forgotten 
that they are Christians. Botticelli's paintings, on 
the other hand, possessed nothing of this bucolic 
repose, nothing of the joyful fable and the quaint 
charm which pervades those of Piero di Cosimo. That 
he could not laugh is clearly shown where he forces 
himself to do so — in such an example as Mars and 
Venus in the National Gallery (London). A beautiful 
woman, a nude youth, cupids, a southern landscape, 
thin draperies, and glittering accessories — such are the 
elements of the picture; and yet the impression does 
not correspond with them. Mars resembles the cruci- 
fied Saviour; his mouth is distorted by pain, and he 
does not sleep, but breathes heavily as if oppressed by 
a nightmare. Equally unpleasant, with a cold mur- 
derous glance like Klinger's bust of Salome, Venus looks 
upon the sleeping hero. Is this the bliss which the im- 
mortal gods enjoy in heavenly repose? Is this the 
love-goddess of the Hellenes? Even when Botticelli 
ventures to paint her nude, there is something ghostly 
about her, staring with green eyes, like a mermaid, 


iS2 tlbe IReUotous IReaction 

into the infinite, or with a melancholy smile 
pervading her trembling lips. Far from resembling 
the joyous mistress of the war-god, she is rather 
like the red-haired she-devil of the middle age, passing 
in her exile by the cross upon which the Son of Man 
hangs crucified. A weary dreaminess or a resigned 
sadness is characteristic of all of his figures. It 
seems as if these women were about to enter the con- 
vent to do penance for their sins of the flesh. The 
classic clearness of heathen mythology is combined 
with a Catholic mysticism; a breath of monkish 
asceticism represses joy. 

Botticelli did not feel himself at home in the Hill 
of Venus. It seemed as if he had been followed by the 
thought of a purer ideal, the chaste Mary to whom 
he sang his first hymns. With all the filaments of his 
soul rooted in the middle age, he shuddered at the 
heathen enthusiasm which for a time beclouded his 
soul like a delirium. His pictures of the antique world 
seem to have been painted as if with hesitation, as 
if an unseen hand held him back. From the last of 
them, Calumny, after Lucian's description of a 
painting by Apelles, and now in the Uffizi Gallery, 
a shrill cry of despair sounds. An action stormy 
beyond measure, the restlessness of fluttering garments, 
and a wild, uncanny expression of countenance appear 
in place of his usual quiet beauty of line and repressed 
melancholy. One feels that a man shattered by 
physical discontent painted this almost insane picture. 


Botticelli 183 

Most terrible of all is the figure of Repentance, an 
emaciated, grief-stricken old woman, clothed in torn 
mourning garments, who, stretching her bloodless, 
spider-like fingers, totters forward, timid and trem- 
bling. Botticelli regretted his tarrying in the Hill of 
Venus. But what power could lead him back into 
the community of the pure, him, the Christian, who 
had sacrificed to strange gods! In this frame of mind, 
he painted The Outcast,^ a work which stands alone in 
the entire art of the century, and could only originate 
because inconsolable suffering in the heart of an artist 
cried out, with elemental power, for expression. Before 
the locked portal of a Renaissance palace sits a maiden 
lightly clad. She has followed her own vagrant fancy, 
and now that the morning has dawned, and she wishes 
to return to her father's house, the door is locked. 
Trembling from the frost and sobbing bitterly, she 
buries her face in her hands, and her body writhes 
in deepest woe; but all her waihng avails not to open 
the locked portal. 

Botticelli himself, likeTannhiiuser, found redemption: 
it was Savonarola who again opened to him the gate of 
salvation. The prophet's voice of thunder which 
frightened others only told him what as a youth he 
had long ago felt. All his youthful dreams, the most 
secret emotions of his soul, v/ere expressed in words, 
and the time of his first romantic attachment seemed 
to return. Inspired and supported by Savonarola, 

' In the collection of Prince Pallavincini at Rome —Ed. 


iS4 Ube IReltgious TReaction 

Botticelli's art received a powerful impulse. Forever 
forgetting Venus, the witch, and with a devotion 
all the more glowing and stormy because united with 
repentance, he sank at the feet of the object of his 
youthful worship, Mary, the mother of God. The three 
Hours, who in Primavera with clasped hands tread a 
measure, are changed into theological virtues, escorting 
in joyful dance the triumphant chariot of the church. 
Not until this work is the whole power of the master 
revealed. Savonarola had touched his Hps and the 
timid, hesitating, dreamy Botticelli had himself become 
a prophet, who with glowing enthusiasm and loud 
pathos preached the return to asceticism and to the 
Christian doctrine of salvation. No longer do his 
figures glance at us with beseeching sadness, but they 
seem to exhort and to warm. 

The difference between his late and his earlier 
Madonnas consists in the much greater emphasis upon 
the gloomy and solemn character of the devotional 
picture. As he changed the youthful, deeply reflective 
mother of God into a thoughtful sibyl to whose 
prophetic glance the future lies revealed, so his angels 
became deeply earnest, sad and tired beings, staring 
with wide-open eyes as if into an abyss. Sometimes 
Mary, as if she had suddenly awakened from an awful 
dream, embraces the child with a stormy fervour; or she 
passes by absorbed in thought like a somnambulist, 
mechanically holding the Christ-child, who with equal 
sadness bends over to John. As the mother* is con- 


IBotticelU 185 

vulsed by a silent woe, so the child feels the whole 
weight of an unavoidable destiny resting upon him. 
To Savonarola's influence also is to be attributed the 
emphasis which in other altar-pieces he places upon the 
maidenly, modest character of the Virgin. The most 
costly objects, glittering stuffs, gleaming marble and 
grey granite are heaped up; and men in all the pomp of 
earthly splendour have assembled as a guard of honour 
around the imposing throne. But upon this throne, 
barefooted and in the black garb of a matron, there 
sits a pale, timid, thoughtful maiden, who does not 
understand the homage paid her. Only Burne-Jones in 
his King Cophetua has with equal refinement depicted 
a similar contrast. 

But Botticelli now struck even louder and more 
penetrating tones. While he had formerly only lived 
in gentle dreams, he struck in his last works the whole 
scale of human emotion; from the joyful dithyrambs 
of the angels, who in the Coronation of the Virgin dance, 
fly, flutter, and rush through the air, singing the praises 
of the Almighty and strewing flowers down upon the 
earth, to the mournful pathos m his picture of the 
Entombment of Christ} The sermon which Savonarola 
preached on Good Friday, 1494, to the breathless, 
tearful people is echoed in the gloomy, sobbing pathos 
of Botticelli's works. One sees women sink into 
unconsciousness, dying of insane anguish, and men 
writhe with loud moaning. The painter of the Venus 

' Both of these paintings are in the Florentine Academy. 


i86 ^be IRclioious IReactton 

has become the Jeremiah of the Renaissance. Instead 
of whispering, he thunders with the fanaticism of the 
convert; he struggles as if defending a great treasure, 
labours with such haste as though he feared that he 
would not be able to express what he had to say. 
More than two thirds of his work originated in these 
years of theocratic rule. 

Then almost nothing more. The martyrdom of 
Savonarola was the funeral of Botticelli's art. As the 
great figure of the prophet had held him above water, 
the fall of his hero robbed him of his power. After he 
had celebrated the memory of the martyr in the 
Adoration of the Kings (London) , he laid down the brush, 
hardly fifty years old, but a broken man. The illus- 
trations of Dante are almost the only evidence of his 
existence during the last decade of his life, " Being 
whimsical and eccentric," relates Vasari, "he occupied 
himself with commenting on a certain part of Dante, 
illustrating the Inferno, and executing prints, over 
which he wasted much time, and, neglecting his proper 
occupation, he did not work, and thereby caused infinite 
disorder in his affairs." In other words, the Tiediaeval 
romanticist took refuge in his true spiritual home. 
In the mystic transcendental poetry of Dante, the great 
genius of the middle age, he sought to find a resting 
place for his afflicted soul. He buried himself in 
remote ideological speculations, in order to forget as 
much as possible the impious present, and sought 
to express in the language of art things which mock 


IFilippino Xippt 187 

at artistic reproductions; hoping to find in the mighty 
epic poem of the future world the quiet repose which 
he so entreatingly and hopelessly sought. But this 
work, too, he threw aside, discouraged. Brooding 
and devoted only to his dreams, lonely and lost in 
meditation, he lived on. Misery and poverty befell 
him. He had to walk about on crutches and would 
have died of starvation had not the Medici occasionally 
remembered him.^ 

ir\D. ifilippino Xippt 

Although the lives of the remaining painters 
were not changed into a tragedy, as were those 
of Piero di Cosimo and Botticelli, they also were 
unable to escape from the influence of the great 
Dominican. Externally the difference appeared in 
the completely changed subject of painting. In 
place of the genre paintings of the Madonna the 
devotional picture again appeared. The Madonna is 
majestically enthroned, no longer a richly dressed 
Florentine woman with coquettish Httle cap, but 

' Vasari's story of Botticelli's poverty and misery in old age, upon 
which the present account is based, is not confirmed by documentary 
evidence. In 1491, under Medicean rule, Botticelli, associated with 
Ghirlandajo, was in charge of the mosaic work of the Cathedral and 
competed in the plans for the facade. According to the income-tax 
of 1498 he possessed a villa and vineyards outside of the gates of San 
Frediano; and in 1503 he was one of the commissioners consulted in 
regard to a location for Michelangelo's David. In 1510 his father 
was sufficiently wealthy to purchase a family vault in the church of 
Ognissanti, where Sandro lies buried. 


1 88 Ubc IRcltotous IReactioix 

the donna umile whom Savonarola had described, 
the poor hand-maiden of the Lord, her face trans- 
figured with silent sadness and a matron's veil drawn 
over her head. Angels draw back a curtain or press 
forward in happy enthusiasm; with coquettish glance 
the saints gaze upward; the Christ-child no longer 
plays, but gives the blessing, and little St. John 
approaches him with a cross in his hand. As 
in the trecento, flowers and music are used to heighten 
the effect. The Adoration of the Kings and the Suf- 
^jerings of the Redeemer, His Crucifixion, Deposition, and 
Entombment, of which Savonarola had so often spoken, 
also occupy the artist. The usual custom of represent- 
ing Christ as beardless more frequently than was 
formerly done may be due to the fact that in the 
eyes of the artists, Savonarola himself seemed the 
Saviour. Visions, also, especially Mary appearing to 
various saints, or Christ to His mother or Magdalen, 
became as popular as in the times of the Counter- 
reformation. While the realist wished to know nothing 
of supernatural things, the miracle, " Faith's dearest 
child," again enters into art. Only the manner in 
which the themes are treated differs in accordance 
with the temperament of the individual artist. 

Lorenzo di Credi followed the course of events in 
thoughtful silence. As his Annunciation in the Uffizi 
and his Adoration of the Shepherds in the Academy 
show, he was a very lovable master, who acquired a 
good colour sense and a delicate feeling for landscape 


J'ilippino Xtppi 189 

in the workshop of Verrocchio and from Goes's altar- 
piece. Then he also sacrificed to the gods of Greece 
and painted that Venus of the Uffizi, a work of Botticelli 
translated into Cranach. At the auto da fe of vanities 
on Carnival Tuesday in 1497, he as a modest, quiet 
man, would have found it discourteous not to have 
taken part; so with bold determination he threw all 
of his life studies into the flames, and began to paint 
the many mild and contemplative pictures which repre- 
sent him in all the galleries. In the midst of that 
temperamental, nervous race, Credi is the only one 
who had no nerves: a kind of Gerard Dou, who was 
lost in the stormy time. He prepared his own colours, 
and with a Dutch sense of cleanliness he was careful 
that no bit of dust dimmed the enamel-like smoothness 
of his paintings. His landscapes must be as clean as 
the room in which he labours: the sod well-trimmed, 
the gravel paths without weeds, the brook sparkling, 
and the sheep fresh-washed. 

He never exercises his intellect, but with incredible 
persistence continues to repeat all his life the same 
scenes. The Adoration of ihe Christ-child especially 
he treated in endless repetitions with a mild and friendly 
charm, too soft to be called melancholy, and with a 
childish, somewhat stupid piety, too phlegmatic to 
rise to passion. Even when, after Savonarola's fall, 
taste again turned to other subjects, Credi did not 
permit his repose to be disturbed. He became a restorer 
of paintings, and finally bought himself a place in a 


igo 'Cbc IRclioions IReaction 

hospital for old men, where, much esteemed by his 
fellow-citizens, he ended his days in contemplative 
peace. 

A similar nature, only much more delicate and tired, 
was Rafaellino del Garbo. With him everything fades 
into the perfume of flowers and music of mandolins. 
His circular painting of the Madonna at Berlin, in 
particular, has a fragrant, almost hypnotic effect. 
To the music of viols and flutes, angels have rocked 
the Christ-child to sleep; a dreamy silence rests over 
the earth, and the last sounds of the angel's viol, 
dying quietly away, vibrate through the air; while 
the other angel, who has ceased playing the flute, 
gazes upon Mary as if lost in a dream. 

Even more interesting is the attitude which Filippino 
Lippi, a thorough child of the world, takes towards 
the new events. It is a piquant coincidence that this 
son of the jolly monk and the former nun, the son of 
that light-hearted sensual period which made a harem 
of the convent, was called to become the painter of 
rigid Dominicanism. And even more piquant is the 
clever and frivolous manner with which he dedicated 
his fascinating talent to the service of ideals quite 
indifferent to him. 

To attempt to explain Filippino Lippi's style would 
be love's labour lost. Whenever he so desires, he can 
imitate others to the point of illusion. At first he 
followed his teacher Botticelli, as whose double he 
appears in his youthful works. The wonderful picture 


ifiUppino Xippi 191 

of the Virgin Appearing io St. Bernard, which he 
painted for the Badia in 1480, might have been signed 
BotticelH, Like an aristocratic lady she gently 
approaches the saint, who almost lets his pen fall in 
astonishment when with her tender hand she touches 
his book. The altar-piece of the Virgin Mary in the 
Uffizi and another in Santo Spirito are further works 
reminding in their quiet melancholy of Botticelli. 
He is equally delicate when, following Botticelli, he 
paints fantastic, allegorical pictures, like the Allegory 
of Music in Berlin, over which a dreamy far-away 
feeling broods. 

Then came an abrupt change of scene, transforming 
Botticelli's double to Masaccio's. He was twenty-seven 
years of age when he received the commission to com- 
plete Masaccio's cycle of frescoes in the Brancacci 
Chapel. The subjects were the Fisit of Paul to Peter; 
the Release of Peter from Prison; Peter and Paul before 
the Proconsul; the Crucifixion of Peter, and the in- 
complete subject of the Raising of the King's Son. 
Truly, a style could not be imitated in a more virtuose 
fashion. During the sixty years intervening between 
Masaccio and Filippino Lippi a very different nervous 
life had come into the world. Nevertheless, Filippino 
Lippi wears the mask of the older master with the same 
self-possession with which he had formerly worn 
Botticelli's. The solemn monumental style of Masaccio 
seems quite as natural to him as the emotional art of 
Botticelli. 

VOL. I.— 13 


192 Zbc IRelioious IReaction 

As a skilful prestidigitator he quickly adapted him- 
self to the style of the age of Savonarola, and thus 
at the close of the fifteenth century the Baroque style 
appears; like causes producing like effects. Under the 
impression of the sermons of Savonarola emotions had 
been raised to the fever pitch. The quiet objectivity 
of the old masters no longer sufficed; agitation and 
pathos were demanded; pictures which spoke in the 
same words of thunder which rolled from Savonarola's 
lips. But the entirely modern trend of his talent, his 
versatility and adaptability, enabled Filippino at once 
to satisfy these demands. As he had formerly 
imitated Botticelli and then Masaccio, he now adopted 
the religious style, with the versatile talent and the 
unbelieving indifference of a child of the world. He 
merely plays the tragedy which Botticelli lived. Just 
because he was not a convinced but only a disguised 
apostle, there enters into his art that affected theatrical 
quality adopted for the same reason by the Baroque 
in the seventeenth century. 

The very theme of the frescoes which in 1493 he 
painted for the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva 
in Rome, shows that the spirit of Dominicanism had 
again entered as a power into the development of art. 
While the masters before Savanarola had treated 
simple and narrative themes from the legend of the 
saint, Filippino depicts an Apotheosis of St. Thomas 
Aquinas. In the pictures the same dogmatism prevails 
which a hundred years before had been the programme 


jFilippino Xlppi 193 

of the Dominican paintings by Traini and the frescoes 
of the Spanish Chapel. Learned inscriptions, alle- 
gorical figures, significant references to the heretics 
refuted by the Saint — things with which the realism of 
the quattrocento had broken — are taken up anew. 
And as he had in his subject attached himself to the 
propagandist painting of the trecento, he also by his 
style paves the way for the art of the Jesuits. The 
simple, sustained narrative of Masaccio is followed by 
theatrical pathos. All the figures gesticulate and 
screw themselves into sanctimonious grimaces; the 
draperies are arranged in puffed and restless folds; and 
fluttering bands, sashes, and veils complete the Baroque 
effect. The architecture plays a suitable accompani- 
ment to the melody of the figures. In place of the 
delicacy of the quattrocento, wildly exaggerated and 
fantastic forms appear. 

Before his last cycle, the frescoes of Santa Maria 
Novella in Florence (1498-15 12) one stands speech- 
less as before an anachronism. Here also the theme 
of the painting, St. Philip Exorcising the Demon, 
is characteristic of the changed views. On a compli- 
cated pedestal stands Mars swinging a torch; while 
from a hole beneath the monument the demon crawls 
forth whom the apostle with a mighty gesture exorcises. 
Round about surges an excited, nervous crowd. In 
place of the quiet spectators of Ghirlandajo's paint- 
ings, Filippino introduces actors, each one of whom 
plays a role, explaining his theatrical pathos with 


194 ^'5e IRelicitous IReactton 

corresponding gestures. Everything in this astonishing 
picture is movement and excitement. Even the cary- 
atids of the triumphal arch, the victories, hermns and 
trophies, stretch themselves and grin; the gables rear 
and writhe, and all technical laws are broken, Bor- 
romini thus appears in art a hundred years before his 
birth. The non plus ultra, however, is the ceiling- 
decorations; angels fly about with the same aplomb 
that Correggio afterwards achieved. Noah resembles 
an ancient river god, while Abraham and Jacob reveal 
such breadth of treatment and such boldness in dra- 
peries and movement, and are encircled by such im- 
possible bands and folds that one can do nothing but 
gaze in silent astonishment. 

The same is true of his later panel-paintings. The 
heavy puffed draperies which encircle his Madonna 
are the same which Bernini gave his angels a hundred 
and fifty years later. In his last work, the Deposition 
from the Cross, in the Florentine Academy, the influ- 
ence of Savonarola is shown in the reversion to the 
golden backgrounds of the middle age, in the simple 
drapery, the desolate Golgotha with its skull, and the 
gloomy, mournful colour. More personally character- 
istic of Filippino are the Baroque angels, with draperies 
streaming in the clouds, and the fluttering sashes and 
bands which they wind about the goblet. The fifteenth 
and seventeenth centuries clasp hands. Had he died 
a generation later, instead of in 1504, he would be 
celebrated as the founder of the Baroque style. 


XTbe Secular IReltaious /IDasters 195 

X>, Zbc Secular IReltglous Masters 

Savonarola's influence was not confined to 
Florence alone, but throughout all Italy it guided 
art back into religious channels. It is certain 
that he did not alone create the religious reaction 
which at that time swept over Europe; for in 
him an explosion found vent, the materials for which 
were everywhere present. He was the speaking-tube 
of his time, proclaiming with loud voice what others 
had felt in silence. It was just for this reason that 
with his appearance a new section of the history of 
art begins. 

At the close of the fifteenth century a similar feeling ^ 
must have pervaded the earth to that experienced in 
the years when the triumphs of Courbet's realism and 
Manet's impressionism were succeeded by the enthu- 
siasm for Rossetti and Moreau, and the reaction of the 
Rosicrucians began. Realism was the product of a 
positive and worldly epoch which expressed itself in 
epic, never in lyric strains. A clear eye was considered 
sufficient, and feeling could be dispensed with. Pas- 
sionless and in the same attitude of science to nature, 
painting wished to conquer by means of the eye alone. 
Nature and the antique were the two powers which 
inspired their activity. Only one thing had been 
forgotten: Christianity. They knew nothing more of 
that longing for the future world which at the beginning 
of the century still pulsated in all hearts. 


196 TLbc IReliotous IReaction 

Then there came, as in the nineteenth century, the 
moment when the long-suppressed inner hfe asserted 
itself, and feeling revolted against science. Not in 
• Florence alone, but in all countries the narrators and 
investigators, whose eye was fixed clearly upon the 
objective world, were confronted by the lyricists and 
the dreamers, for whom art was only a means of express- 
ing the inner life. The realists were followed by the 
romanticists, who, tired of the decades of unbelieving 
investigators, longed for the fervent faith and the 
unselfish love which the middle age had professed. 

True, there were still individuals who decorated the 
churches and palaces with narratives of the news of the 
day. During his sojourn in Constantinople, Gentile 
Bellini had ample opportunity to see many things that 
were ethnographically interesting, which he recorded 
in his sketch book; and after his return to his native 
city he illustrated in the same way the manners and 
usages of Venice. Festal processions approach; richly 
decked Venetians, dignified senators, and browned sons 
of the Orient in strange gaudy costumes move upon the 
pavement of the Piazzetta. The whole of Venice of 
the quattrocento, with its streets, squares, churches, and 
palaces; with the charming colour of the costumes of its 
inhabitants, collected from the Orient and the Occident, 
is preserved in his paintings with the faithfulness of a 
document and with the exactitude of a photographic 
apparatus. Of course it is at bottom immaterial who 
takes such photographical representations, which do 


TLbc Secular IReltQtous /IDasters 197 

not rise above the level of painted illustrations. What 
was an actual achievement in Pisanello's time was no 
longer one at the close of the century. 

Gentile's counterpart in Umbria was Pinturicchio, 
who left an amazing number of frescoes in Rome, 
Spello and Siena — paintings which may be described 
with the same words as those of Benozzi Gozzoli. Like 
the latter he is a merry narrator, who with great skill 
devotes himself to wordy descriptions of festal scenes 
and with great ease invents rich Renaissance buildings. 
Resplendent costumes, gaudy carpets before the throne, 
stately halls, and proud facades give his pictures a 
joyous, festal imprint. But as Gozzoli had achieved 
this effect as early as 1460, it was no achievement to 
repeat the performance in 1500, the less so as Pin- 
turicchio does not even excel his predecessor in 
technique. With the childishness of a miniature 
painter he places red, green, and blue side by side, as if 
the great technicians in colour had never existed. He 
never succeeds in seizing the dramatic elements of a 
scene, in connecting the figures with each other, or in 
bringing unity into the action. Nor does he understand 
how to arrange the figures in perspective, but places 
those of the background upon the heads of those in front. 
He seems to be a primitive who has survived in the 
sixteenth century. His position as the court painter 
of that Borgia who was instrumental in burning 
Savonarola shows how distant he stood from the great 
ideals of the age. For in the case of Pinturicchio it 


198 Ubc IRcltoious IReacttoii 

could hardly be maintained that his was a conscious 
reversion to mediaeval miniature painting. 

His works, therefore, as well as Gentile Bellini's 
merely confirm the passing away of realism. The very 
scene of their activity is characteristic. Gentile 
laboured in Venice, which was always decades behind 
the artistic development of the rest of Italy; and while 
Pinturicchio succeeded in playing an important role 
in Perugia, Orvieto, Spello, Siena, and even in Rome, 
whose ariistic activity had lagged behind, he never 
dared attempt Florence. In other words, whereas 
about the middle of the century the spirit of realism 
prevailed in all progressive cities, and religious art 
quietly survived chiefly in the country, the relation 
now is reversed. Precisely in the most modern city 
of Italy, in Florence, which had done the longest and 
most complete homage to realism, the signal for a 
complete change was earliest and most loudly sounded. 
After that, even in the remainder of Italy, the need for 
v/orldly pictures was supplied by illustrators of the 
second rank. The realists are no longer factors in the 
historical development, but stragglers who blessed 
unprogressive cities and small villages with doubtful 
artistic productions. 

As with the contemporary historical painting and the 
presentation, also, of New Testament subjects in modern 
costume so it is all over with the antique. Although 
in the preceding epoch Padua had been the strong 
citadel of Hellenism, now even the heathen Mantegna 


Ube Secular IReliaious /IDasters 199 

flees as a repentant Christian to the foot of the cross. 
Savonarola had preached in the cities of northern Italy 
as well as in Florence. Did Mantegna hear him, or 
did the waves of the new religious revival which the 
Dominican had inspired indirectly reach him? Strange 
incidents are related of his last years. He, the Roman, 
the hard, implacable spirit, had a chapel built, in which, 
as a hermit, he daily practised contemplation. An 
antique bust of Faustina, the gem of his collection, 
which he had guarded as a precious treasure, he offered 
for sale to the Marchioness of Mantua, and his last 
works offer further proof of the great change in his 
spirit. 

As in the case of Botticelli, the transition first reveals 
itself in his preference of allegorical to antique subjects. 
Especially, the picture he painted for Isabella d' Este, 
showing Wisdom Expelling the Vices, is a strange 
pendant to Botticelli's Calumny of Apelles. The 
whole is pervaded by a disagreeable torn and shattered 
feeling; and in the air, quite out of connection with the 
principal theme, a heavenly group appears. Finally, 
he refused altogether to work further upon the cycle, 
and his activity ceased in Christian representations of 
quite a different spirit from those he had painted during 
his heathen period. 

Then he had painted Sebastian bound to an antique 
ruin, professing himself a Hellene in the Greek inscrip- 
tion, and had in a line engraving represented him as a 
Greek ephehos dying in his beauty. In the painting 


zoo Zbc IReUciious IReactlon 

of the Franchetti collection in Venice, the beautiful 
youth has become an emaciated man, a suffering mortal 
whose features are furrowed by painful woe. " Nil 
nisi divinum stabile est, cetera fumus," the inscription 
reads. Formerly in painting Madonnas and Entomb- 
ments, the emotional content of the theme was in- 
different to him. He was attracted by the bronze-like 
beauty of sinewy bodies, the splendour of marble 
thrones and fruit garlands, and the stony appearance 
of the landscape. In the works which sound the last 
chord of his activity, the spirit of Christianity begins to 
animate the rigid stony objects. The clear-headed 
and carefully-weighing Mantegna becomes a lyricist 
and a wailing prophet. Sometimes his figures have a 
mild, thoughtful, and melancholy expression ; at others 
a passionate pathos, formerly confined within the steel 
corslet of Grecian rules of style, breaks forth with 
abrupt directness. The Christ-child is sad, almost 
weeping, and Mary, with foreboding of future suffering, 
thoughtfully bows her head. The altar-piece of the 
National Gallery in London and the Madonna della 
Vicioria of the Louvre show this change with especial 
clearness. The tones of the organ resound, festal 
niches of foliage arise; saints, no longer the sullen, 
reticent bronze beings of his earlier days, but fair- 
haired and ecstatic gather around the throne. The 
Christ-child, who in the altar-pieces of San Zeno in 
Verona sang so joyfully with the angels, now, solemn 
and shrinking, gives a melancholy blessing. Mary, 


TLbt Secular IReliolous /IDasters 201 

formerly rigid and majestic, is now a pale and languish- 
ing maiden staring dreamily and sadly into vacancy, 
clothed as humbly as a beggar, the donna umile of 
Botticelli. 

At the same time that the latter completed his 
grief-convulsed Entombment, Mantegna painted his. 
His feet in the foreground, the corpse of Christ appears 
in boldest foreshortening — a revival of Mantegna 's 
love of perspective. But who thinks of perspective in 
the presence of this sunken body, with the hands 
cramped together; of these old women whose wrinkled 
faces are contorted in nameless woe ? From the 
contemporary line engraving of the same subject, the 
cry of despair sounds even wilder. In raving grief 
Magdalen bends over the corpse; Mary sinks into 
unconsciousness, and, loudly as a maniac, John cries 
his agony to heaven. The cold and reticent, classically 
severe Mantegna has through Savonarola become a 
Rogier van der Weyden. "Humani generis redemp- 
tori" is inscribed in large letters upon the sarcophagus. 
To the same Saviour of mankind Mantegna's last line 
engraving is dedicated. Christ, arisen from the grave 
and holding the banner of victory, stands blessing 
between Sts. Andrew and Longinus. The former, 
holding the cross in quiet confidence, is the saint 
for whom the artist is named; and the Roman warrior 
bowing his head so deeply, who, timid as a prodigal 
son, approaches the Saviour with folded hands, is 
Mantegna himself, the man of the Renaissance seek- 


202 Ube IRelioious IReactlon 

ing peace in the faith of Christ. In this print the tra- 
gedy of a Hfe is summarised — the tragedy of the 
quaiirocento. 

Although at the beginning of the fifteenth century 
the middle age quietly passed away, its close witnessed 
a subtle and refined revival of all the mediaeval styles. 
Instead of going forward the artists looked backwards. 
"Le moyen-age enorme et delicat" is their spiritual 
home. 

The reactionary tendencies are especially evident in 
Venice. The new religious current of the epoch en- 
abled its painters not only to hold fast with conserva- 
tive rigidity to the ideals of the early quattrocento, but 
once more to invoke the gloomy majesty of the By- 
zantine style. Although he lived until 1499, Bartol- 
ommeo Vivarini remains, in his austerity, a Paduan of 
the days of Squarcione. Rigid and in separate panels, 
as in Squarcione's altar, his figures stand before us. 
The elevated marble thrones are adorned with statuettes 
of angels, stone ornaments, and with garlands of fruits 
and flowers. The figures of the saints are severe and 
ascetic, their features careworn or sullen, and their 
mighty brows are ploughed with deep furrows. The 
colour is gloomy and threatening, and the white, black, 
and yellow draperies gleam harshly from the golden 
background. 

'Carlo Crivelli does not appear to belong to the 


Ccivelli 203 

fourteenth century at all, but to the pre-Giottesque 
period of Cimabue. In Huysmans's A rebours there is 
a passage describing how Des Esseintes had the shell of 
a tortoise varnished with a gold glaze and set with rare 
and precious stones, — after which he placed it upon 
an oriental carpet and rejoiced in the glittering colour- 
effect. Carlo Crivelli's paintings resemble this gilded 
tortoise: in their sparkling metallic splendour and icy 
reptilian coldness, they have at the same time an 
offensive and delicate, a revolting and attractive effect. 
Like the mosaicists of the middle age, he could not 
conceive a painting without rich and glittering orna- 
ments, applied (especially in the case of keys and 
crowns) in the heavy style of a relief. Like them his 
eyes were entranced with the sheen of fabrics, the 
sparkle of precious stones, and a quite barbaric material 
splendour. His saints wear the triple papal crown, 
their clothes are set with precious stones, and an 
amazing wealth of ornament adorns the frames. 
But he was not satisfied with keeping Grecian stoles, 
mass-vestments of gold fabric, and brocaded choir 
mantles, and setting the crosiers of his saints with 
transparent pearls of a glassy, piercing splendour. 
Even where ornaments do not belong, upon the sar- 
cophagus of Christ, for example, emeralds, rubies, 
topazes and gleaming amethysts sparkle, here a 
bluish-red, there sea-green in their chilling splendour. 
He loved the glittering products of the goldsmith's 
art, the magic of slender goblets and pyxes; monstrances 


204 XEbe IRelioious IReactton 

of gilded copper in the Byzantine style; precious altar 
tables with engraved ornaments, and old quarto 
volumes clasped in silver. Even the gay plumage of 
birds must assist to heighten the splendour of his 
paintings, especially of peacocks, with tails gleaming 
in gold, green, blue, and silver. 

Quite as mediaeval as this barbaric splendour of colour 
is the effect of his archaic drawing. The position of 
his Madonnas is as rigid as those of Cimabue; the colour 
of their faces is pale and corpse-like; their emaciated 
arms are bare to the elbow, and small and withered 
hands stretch out from their sleeves. Although in 
other altar-pieces of the day the donors are depicted 
equal in size to the saints and kneel in the midst of 
the chief painting, Crivelli reverted to the mediaeval 
custom of introducing them as pygmies quite outside 
of the composition. 

Alongside of these Byzantine traits are Paduan 
and Umbrian tendencies. In the sweetness which he 
sometimes imparts to his Madonnas, he reminds us of 
Gentile da Fabriano; he comes in contact with the 
mystics of the trecento when he distinguishes the Christ- 
child as a fisher of men by placing a hook in his hand. 
Even a Netherlandish trait is thought to be observed 
in his manner of grouping pots and candlesticks, plates 
and glasses, carpets and cushions, bottles and vases 
as still life. His severe types of children and careworn 
old women are quite Paduan, reminding us of Schiavone 
and Zoppo; as are also the heavy garlands hanging over 



MADOXXA WITH SAINTS 

Berlin Gallery 


CrivelU 205 

the rich marble throne, and the large peaches and stiff 
flowers scattered upon the ground. Quite Paduan is 
the pathos which pervades his presentation of the 
Pietd. Howling Meg^eras prostrate themselves over 
the corpse, a half-decayed, mouldering body, the skin 
of which hangs like leather from the ribs; great tear- 
drops run down the cheeks of the angels, and a con- 
vulsive pain distorts the figures and the features of 
the Redeemer. 

But it is precisely in such paintings, where he weeps 
pathetically, that his cruel coldness is the more evident. 
Although he has sounded the entire gamut of emotion, 
from howling pain to affected ecstasy, the effect of 
his art is cold as ice. Even though his saints distort 
their lips with morbid gracefulness or in grotesque 
pain and weep hot tears, his works retain the petrified 
jewel-like effect of the mosaic style. Rigidly as 
exhumed corpses the men stare at us; cold and clear is 
the glance of the women, with their steel-blue, faience- 
like eyes. The very pottery which he heaps about, 
and the ugly, pale, confused landscape, over which 
such a strange greenish light shines, strengthen the 
cold, corpse-like effect. Only in his refinement of 
colour, in the subtle manner in which he takes up an- 
cient notes and combines them to new chords, and in 
the tortuous daintiness with which his women stretch 
out their nervous hands and crook their spider-like 
fingers, can we recognise the artist of the quattrocento, 
for whom this archaic style is not natural, but an 


2o6 Ube IRclitjious IReaction 

artificial one chosen with conscious epicureanism. 
We can also understand why just Crivelli was called 
to efTect this strange revival of the middle age. For 
he was an aristocratic gentleman, and when in 1490 
King Ferdinand of Naples raised him to the dignity 
of knighthood, he seems to have regarded this dis- 
tinction as the most important event of his life. From 
now on he represented St. Sebastian as a knight, 
and always signs himself equcs. If he lived to-day 
he would belong not to the Liberal but to the extreme 
Conservative party. The most reactionary of all 
aristocratic Venice he conceived the idea of again 
proclaiming, at least in the country, the gospel of the 
mighty, unshaken mediaeval church — in all those little 
towns like Massa, Ripatransone, Ascoli, Camerino, and 
Fermo, whither neither worldliness nor ecclesiastical 
struggles had penetrated. Considering also that his 
belief was not a sincere one and that the distinguished 
Crivelli, himself a sort of Des Esseintes, only regarded 
Byzantine art as a source of aesthetic pleasure, and the 
old ecclesiastical ideals as so much perfumed golden 
tinsel — the character of his painting is evident. It is 
an artificial and affected art, playing in a cold-blooded 
manner with all the emotions of the heart; uniting 
childishness with mouldy decay, archaic severity with 
putrid decadence. - This perversity also explains why 
our own time has made a favorite of Crivelli. As 
latter-day beings burdened with a long past, for whom 
the art of our predecessors signifies aesthetic nature, 


Iperugtno 207 

we love Crivelli, because the blue blood of the ancient 
and cultivated past flows through his veins; because, 
as a conscious abstracter of the quintessence of things, 
he chose the most dainty and the most precious in 
the past to form his bizarre style. We admire, because, 
in the midst of the world which had grown quite 
different, he resurrected such cruel visions and such 
fantastic apotheoses of a bygone time, and invoked in 
such an amazing manner the splendour of the middle 
age in its barbaric glory. We love him as we love 
Gustave Moreau, because his dainty, aristocratic and 
mannered style is the acme of refinement; and because 
his art is unknown to the masses for the very reason 
that it preserved these haughty and noble qualities. 

DM. peruglno 

An apparition like Crivelli was only possible in 
Byzantine Venice, whose aristocratic population 
had never loved a living art, but had preferred to 
collect only ancient and sparkling things, medals 
and cameos, mosaics, filigree work, and ivory. The 
following artist has the same relation to Crivelli as the 
Siennese, as Fiesole and Lochner, to the mosaic painters. 
As in Venice the ancient Byzantine style, so in Umbria 
the spirit of Francis of Assisi was revived anew. It is 
customary to deduce the mystic and dreamy traits 
of Umbrian art from the character of the country. 
While in a city like Florence a worldly and realistic art 
necessarily developed, only a lyric and elegiac art was 

VOL. I. — 14 


2o3 XTbc IRellciious IReaction 

possible in the isolated valleys of Umbria, where poor 
people, silently trusting in God, lived a contemplative 
life. But however convincing this may appear, styles 
of painting can only result from the prevailing spiritual 
factors of the epoch. At the same time that Umbria 
possessed a mystic painter in Gentile da Fabriano, 
Florence saw hers in Fiesole. At the same time that 
the great investigators, Uccello, Castagno and Pol- 
lajuolo, labored in Florence, Umbria produced the 
greatest of all investigators, Piero della Francesca, 
and later Melozzo and Signorelli, Among other 
Umbrians Benedetto Bonfigli, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, 
and Niccolo di Liberatore are still confirmed realists, 
knowing nothing of that emotional blessedness and 
sentimental ecstasy which came into Umbrian art 
through Perugino. 

The latter, however, received his inspiration not in 
Umbria but in Florence. "Think not that Mary at 
the death of her Son went screaming through the 
streets, tearing her hair and acting like one possessed. 
She followed her Son with meekness and great hu- 
mility, She shed tears, indeed, but externally she did 
not appear sad — rather at the same time sad and 
joyful. Thus also she stood under the cross, sad and 
joyful at the same time and quite lost in contemplation 
of the secret of the great goodness of God." These 
words of Savaronola were a revelation to Perugino: a 
joyful sadness, smiles among tears, is the prevailing 
sentiment of all of his pictures. Umbria added only 


perualno 209 

the delicate charm of its landscape; the melancholy 
effect of a pale, delicate green, and the spare, quivering 
trees of spring, shivering and longingly stretching 
out their branches towards the sunlight. 

In this dreamy melancholy Perugino is one of the 
most enchanting masters of the quattrocento. The 
reproach has been brought against him that his art 
was not in harmony with his character; that the painter 
of such mystic and supernatural work was a clear- 
headed and calculating business man, who repeated 
the joyful ecstasy of his saints in cold routine, merely 
to please the public. His one-sideness has also been 
dwelt upon; and it has been maintained that the con- 
ception of powerful and virile characters, as well as the 
lifelike representation of energetic action, was denied 
him; that instead of connecting his figures, he places 
them side by side, often so symmetrically that the left 
half of the painting corresponds with the right; and 
that, instead of differentiating them with reference 
to their character, he made all of them either boyish 
pages or meek and mild old men. 

Yet all of these peculiarities resulted as a logical 
consequence of the end he sought to attain. The 
contemplative and lyric character of his saints and the 
impression of sustained repose and archaic sublimity 
which he wished to create could only be attained by a 
composition which did not permit its quiet repose to be 
disturbed by hasty movement or changeful contrasts. 
For this reason he avoids variety in position; the 


2IO TLbc IRellcjlous IReaction 

figures cither stand straddling or in affected daintiness 
upon the toes. The symmetrical arrangement of his 
paintings may also have been determined by the point 
of view that this arrangement best expressed the 
"divinityin the construction of nature" — in accordance 
with the saying of St. Augustine: "Where order exists, 
there is beauty, and all order comes from God." The 
feminine proclivities of his art he has in common with 
all mystics, the Siennese as well as the Cologne painters. 
Women (and also girlish youths and weary old men) 
are better suited to be bearers of the soft sentiment 
which he alone interprets. 

Perugino's adoption of Savonarola's idea of joyful 
sadness is perhaps a specifically Umbrian trait. 
Whereas in the works of Botticelli and Mantegna the 
sentiment, whether it be abrupt pathos or suffering 
despair, is that of a wild struggle, in the sweet, soulful 
figures of Perugino, smiling so sadly or dreaming so 
mournfully, the mild piety and childish peace of soul 
of Francis of Assisi still appears. In a storm-convulsed 
time which usually played fortissimo, he was the first 
to prescribe dolce, adagio,and mena voce for his composi- 
tions, and to seek out the softer and finer emotions 
instead of great convulsions. It is just this absence 
of movement and discreet moderation, this delight in 
dreaming and this preference for tender and weary feel- 
ings, which make him so related to our own time. Al- 
though he lived more in Florence, the great city, than 
in little Perugia, his art resembles a quiet, secluded 


Ipefuoino 211 

mountain tarn, reflecting the entire heaven in its 
dear depths. 

What the artist of the Medicean age saw in the 
antique, Perugino found in allegory. When Isabella 
d' Este commissioned him to paint a picture for her 
study, he did not choose a heathen subject like 
Mantegna's Parnassus, but depicted the Victory of 
Chastity over Love (now in the Louvre ). In like manner 
the cycle of frescoes painted in 1499-1500, for the 
court-room of the money-changers in Perugia, is 
characteristic of the change which had come over art 
since Savonarola's appearance. Although upon the 
ceiling the deities of the firmament move to and fro, 
and Greek and Roman heroes are portrayed upon the 
walls, the theme is not antique, but rather a reversion, 
under the influence of the spirit of the time, to the 
allegoric subjects popular in the trecento. As in the 
Dominican paintings of the Spanish Chapel, IVisdom, 
Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance are personified 
by female figures to which those of men famed for 
these virtues are added by way of commentary. 

All of his remaining paintings are dedicated to the 
Mother of God, and however different the themes the 
sentiment is always the same, a joyful sadness, smiles 
amidst tears. For the mild ecstasy of his figures 
he also found suitable soft colours, and was one of 
the first to discover the secret threads which bind the 
sentiment of the landscape with the human soul. 
With the Child upon her arm Mary usually sits dreaming, 


21 2 


Tlbe IRelitjious IReactiou 


her eyes fixed upon a mysterious horizon; or she kneels 
before the new-born infant, happy and yet sad, as if 
her joy were subdued by the presentiment of a future 
fate ; or else a melancholy smile spreads over her features 
when the music of heavenly harps sounds. A wonder- 
ful eflect is attained by the pious, refined, and yet 
simple manner in which he depicts the Vision of St. 
Bernard. In a graceful hall of columns opening into 
a view upon an Umbrian m.ountain landscape, the saint 
sits at his desk gazing upon the incarnation of the 
Blessed One who had just occupied his thoughts. 
Inaudibly, with maidenly timidity she approaches 
and then speaks to him, accompanied by two dove-eyed 
angels. Bernard is not frightened, makes no motion, 
and does not rise from his seat, but raises his hand as if 
to welcome a long-expected visitor, and looks joyfully 
upon the heavenly vision. 

In another cycle of frescoes, painted in 1492-96 in the 
church of Santa Maria Maddalenadei Pazzi, Florence, 
he depicts the Crucifixion and the events following. 
The wall is separated by three arches, in the middle 
one of which stands, in the silent desolate landscape, 
the cross with the Saviour. He is portrayed as very 
youthful, without a beard, and disfigured by no traces 
of suffering. The Magdalen is praying, Mary looks 
reflectively before her, and no cry or gesture of pain 
disturbs the holy quiet; a weary peace has spread over 
the landscape. With equal repose, without any 
dramatic excitement, the Entombment is portrayed. 


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peruQtuo 213 

Instead of writhing bodies convulsed with pain, such 
as Botticelli and Mantegna had painted, Perugino 
only gives a sorrowful scene of parting, a silent wor- 
ship of souls. Mary, whom Botticelli has represented 
as sinking into unconsciousness, bends over the dead 
man as if she wished to speak apart with him; the 
other participants stand murmuring silent prayers and 
lost in painful contemplation. As little as he here 
knows wild pathos did he depict stormy joy in the 
Ascension. With a tired inclination of the head, the 
apostles, arranged in a straight line, look up to heaven, 
where, borne by the heads of seraphs, the Risen One 
hovers, while upon the cloudlets angels make music. 
The delicately poised position, the childishly con- 
ceived cloudlets, and the symmetrical arrangement — 
all these things betray how consciously Perugino 
imitates the archaic in order to attain an unreal, 
trecento effect. 

The note which he struck was so much in the spirit 
of the times, and his paintings in their bitter-sweet 
sentimentality had such a tormenting and fascinating 
effect, that others soon tuned their instruments to the , 
same key. Francesco Francia in Bologna, choosing 
the same subjects, paints Madonnas, Holy Families, the 
Adoration of the Christ-child, and Holy Conversations. 
As with Perugino, Mary wears the matron's veil over 
her head; like the Umbrian master he is more at home 
in painting women than men; only that he has a similar 
relation to Perugino that Lorenzo di Credi had to 


214 Ube IReltoious IReactton 

Botticelli. He is harsher, less temperamental and 
more fleshly, and cannot rise to the sweet ecstasy and 
divine languor of Perugino. As the figures themselves 
are fuller, more healthful and powerful, so the colour 
is more quiet and material, but less warm and fragrant. 
The trembling melancholy of Perugino is replaced by 
a woful meekness, his vibrating nervousness by 
phlegmatic calm. Like Credi he was a quiet, lovable 
man, v/ho attracted numerous pupils to his atelier. 
Timoteo Viti, Raphael's first master, a charming 
and delicate artist, whose works are characterised 
by quiet joyfulness and a soft dreaminess, is especially 
indebted to him. Lorenzo Costa, also, who at first 
painted in the harsh manner of the Ferrarese, acquired 
his later style, which was full of sentiment and grace- 
fully artificial, from his association with Francia. 
In his paintings meek men and modest women who 
only know soft feelings and mild gestures lead an 
aesthetic life in the midst of dainty landscapes. 
Rather hovering than walking, and with modestly 
sunken head, they move about with a mannered grace 
— quite a different race from the powerful and 
angular mortals which he once painted from Tura's 
pictures. 

Quite otherwise the religious sentiment of Milan is 
differentiated. Vincenzo Foppa, who is considered 
the founder of old Milanese art, can hardly be recognised 
as a pupil of Mantegna. Although he decorated a 
chapel in the church of Sant' Eustorgio in accordance 


■% 


peruatno 215 

with the principles of Mantegna's ceiling-decoration, 
the effect here, as well as in the Maryirdom of Sebastian, 
is not one of Paduan severity but of Umbrian softness. 
As regards Bernardo Zenale, the artist next following 
him, nothing can at present be said, because the Madon- 
na in the Brera formerly considered his principal work 
was probably painted by Boltraffio. Although it is cer- 
tainly a phrase to call Ambrogio Borgognone a North 
Italian Fiesole, there is one point of resemblance. 
Like Fiesole, Borgognone lived for a long time in a 
convent, the Certosa of Pavia. This sentiment of 
the cloister, a breath of peace like the sweep of angels' 
wings, pervades his paintings. The heads are pale and 
spiritual, and the colour in its veiled silvery-grey 
harmonies had the effect of a song played in the high, 
delicately touched notes of a violin. He appears like 
a distinguished clergyman of quiet tastes who has 
fled from the noise of the world to seek quiet con- 
templation. Indeed, he does not impress one as an 
Italian. Something of the sincerity of an old German, 
I might almost say the sentiment of "forget-me-nots," 
hovers over his modest, lovely works. Think for a 
moment of the putii of the Italian artist, and then 
look upon the little philistines in night dresses who in 
Borgognone's Crucifixion bewail the Saviour in an old- 
fashioned, pathetic manner, as if they were repeating 
school poems, or the two small lads in gold-embroidered 
caps who appear beside Mary in the Berlin picture. 
Compare the pictures of Christ by the Italians with 


2i6 Zbc IRelioious IReactton 

the pale, consumptive man with the spare beard, 
softly inclining to his mother in Borgognone's picture 
in San Simpliciano. Even the Gothic character of 
his composition is significant. It seems as if he had 
wished to create the impression of an ancient glass 
painting, the arrangement of which is never triangular, 
but vertical and straight-lined in accordance with the 
demands of Gothic architecture. This explains why 
none of his figures make broad, ample movements, 
and why the Christ-child sits so bolt upright in Alary's 
lap; why he always arranged his draperies in vertical 
parallel folds; why of the flowers he especially loved 
the slender lily; or why in his picture of the Crucifixion 
the hair of Magdalen falls in such straight lines over 
her shoulders. It also explains why the rich Renais- 
sance ornament in his hands almost acquires the per- 
pendicular and stiff forms of the empire. Of modern 
artists, Burne-Jones especially has learned much from 
Borgognone. The extended angels who in his Days 
of Creation hold the celestial sphere with the hieratic 
solemnity, are lineal descendants of those in Borgo- 
gnone's Coronation of the Virgin. To the German Naza- 
renes, had they known him, his aesthetic thoughtfulness 
and pale dreaminess would have been sympathetic. 
For the knightly princes of fable whom he so loved may 
be found in the pictures of Steinle. The pale and 
young deacon in the painting of Siro in the Certosa 
is like Borgognone himself, the type of the art-loving 
friar who lived in the fantasy of Wackenroder. 


(Biovanni Bellini 217 

11)111111. ©iovannt Jellini 

At Venice Giovanni Bellini conducted art from the 
Byzantinism of Crivelli and the Paduan rigidity of 
Bartolommeo Vivarini into the paths of ^tticelli and 
Perugino. At first he had no individual style, but be- 
ing of a pliant nature he began by following his brother- 
in-law Mantegna in painting pictures like the Pieia 
of the Brera, which in its harsh pathos and hard draw- 
ing might have been the work of a Paduan. After 
Antonello da Messina had come to Venice, Giovanni was 
the first, under the influence of this Sicilian Nether- 
lander, to adopt the technique of oil painting. Not 
until he had absorbed these different elements did he 
become Bellini. The great religious revival which, 
since the appearance of Savonarola, had convulsed 
Italy also helped him to find himself. His great 
altar-piece in the church of the Frari (1488), with the 
angel boys making music, and the mighty saints; that 
of San Pietro in Murano, in which the Doge Barbarigo 
kneels before the Christ-child; that of San Giobbe, 
where Mary as if astonished stares into the infinite; and 
that of 1 505 in San Zaccaria, in which an expression of 
woe transfigures her serious features — these are the 
world-known pictures of which one always thinks when 
Bellini's name is mentioned. 

1 1 is difficult to express in words the sentiment of these 
works. Writers on art formerly endeavoured to 
characterise Venetian painting by contrasting it with 
the Florentine. They maintained that, while the Flor- 


2is Zbc IRelioious IReactton 

entines loved broad epic narration or dramatic action, 
a lyric sentiment pervades Venetian painting; they 
contrasted the plastic severity of the Florentines with 
the power of Venetian colour to awaken sentiment, 
and their representations of motherly love with the 
solemn devotional subjects of the Venetians. But in 
doing so they compared works of art of two quite 
different epochs. At the time when Bellini created 
his mature works, dreamers had succeeded the scho- 
lars also on the bank of the Arno, and profane paint- 
ings had been followed by devotional. In Flor- 
ence, also, since the appearance of Goes's altar-piece, 
no longer form but colour stood in the foreground. 
Here as there, artists painted Mary as the donna umile, 
a maiden of the people unadorned and with the matron's 
veil drawn about her head, and the female saints 
surrounding her aristocratically fine, pale, and richly 
clad, their carefully dressed hair adorned with pearls. 
Even the angels making music, cited as characteristics 
of Venetian painting, are quite as frequent in the 
works of Perugino and Raffaellino del Garbo. The 
tender keynote, the musical and emotional elements, are 
common to all works of the period. What distinguishes 
Bellini from the rest is purely personal things, delicate 
nuances, which are to be explained partly by the 
character of the painter and partly by the surroundings 
under which he laboured. 

'When the epicurean age of the Magnifico had passed 
away. Botticelli, a characteristic son of nervous 



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Oiovanni Bellini 219 

Florence, in need of an abrupt contrast, threw 
himself into the arms of the great Dominican. The 
feeling with which he did this was similar to that which 
in Paris, ten years ago, the Rosicrucians, also seized 
by a projonde tristesse epicurienne, proclaimed their 
spiritual gospel. Weary and no longer able to ?jear 
the benumbing odour of Aphrodite's roses, he ap- 
proached with unsteady tread the throne upon which 
Mary, crowned with cold whit'? flowers, sits in silence. 
Just because he had formerly sacrificed to heathen 
gods, he now battled for the ideals of Christianity with 
the zeal of the convert. He speaks in shrill and wail- 
ing tones, and the lines in his paintings are hard 
and austere; deathly pale hands are stretched forth. 
It seemed as if Mary herself could not escape the 
recollection of the Hill of Venus, as she glances fear- 
fully, like a timid roe, convulsed by a trembling 
longing for peace. 

Perugino, the true son of the Umbrian mountains, 
passed his youth in high and lonely valleys among 
a poverty-stricken population. The character of his 
home is impressed upon his pictures. The landscape 
which he paints is of a lyric charm; bare trees grow 
upon delicate swelling ground, and there is something 
unstable, timid, and imploring in this sickly vegetation. 
His figures resemble the quivering trees which any gust 
of wind could fell. He deprives them of everything 
that smacks of the earth, disrobes them of everything 
carnal; so that only a shadow, a soul quivering in 


220 


U\K IReliotoua IReactton 


delicate, intangible accords, remains. They are sensitive 
to the finger-tips, spiritual to the point of sickliness, 
suffering and filled with a mystic longing. For the 
hill country of Umbria was also the land of mysticism 
and of second sight, the land of forebodings and of 
dreams. Here St. Francis dreamed that he had been 
called to support the Lateran Basilica, and here he 
saw Christ hovering above him in the figure of a winged 
seraph. Here Catherine of Siena had her blessed 
visions, and in every shepherd-maiden a Joan of Arc 
lived. Perugino's Madonnas also resemble country 
maidens, pious, dreamy children, who, attending to 
the flocks and buried in mystic contemplation, sud- 
denly hear the voice of their patron saint. 

Giovanni Bellini had never visited the Hill of Venus; 
for the spirit of Hellenism had never penetrated his 
oriental corner of the earth. He had never experienced 
tragedy, but passed an entire life like a long, beautiful 
and stormless day. Furthermore, when he created 
his most beautiful pictures he was already an old man. 
To the little plush cap which he wears in his portrait 
one would like to add a dressing gown. Everywhere his 
pictures are lacking in the psychopathic, nervously 
excited and shattered elements which bring Botticelli 
so near to our own time. There we find psychic unrest, 
the cry of a human soul ; here eternal peace, a great and 
simple harmony — the mild, transfigured repose of old 
age, which no longer knows impetuous action. As we 
love Botticelli because we find in him a reflex of every- 


(Giovanni Bellini 221 

thing that is morbid, nervous and strained with us, we 
look up to Bellini as to a noble patriarch who possessed 
the great and secluded repose which is no longer ours. 
He differs from Perugino in his solemn grandeur and 
in the specifically ecclesiastical sentiment that pervades 
his pictures: country air with Perugino, the perfume of 
flowers with Botticelli, and incense with Bellini. While 
the Umbrian's Madonnas possess a bucolic element, 
Bellini's give the impression of entering into a wide 
and lofty cathedral. All is quiet about, and the 
sublime figures of his paintings live their serious and 
lonely existence in solemn grandeur. This solemn, 
ecclesiastical effect is not only produced by placing 
the throne of Mary in the mighty apse of a church; 
but the figures themselves exhale a sort of magic 
breath of the divine, and appear themselves to 
possess the sentiment which comes over one when, 
with bared head, one passes from noise and daylight 
into the consecrated dimness and deep silence of the 
house of God. They neither speak nor make motion; 
silent as if under the spell of the Holy of Holies, they 
stand there just as we stand when, lost in dreams, 
we gaze into the golden night of St. Mark's, and let 
ourselves be hypnotised by the eyes of the Byzantine 
saints, solemnly staring down from the golden mosaics; 
or as when sitting on the Lido we gaze upon the dreamy 
mirror of the lagoons. For Byzantinism and the 
lagoons produce the same effect: a solemn Nirvana 
stupefying the human spirit. This stupor of the 


X 


222 Tlbe IReliolous IReaction 

spirit probably best expresses the sentiment of Bellini's 
paintings. 

He never paints action, but only feeling; never 
/■ motion, but only repose; and these feelings are so sup- 
pressed and have entered so little into the sphere of 
consciousness that his people seem stupefied by opium. 
His saints never have the languishing ecstasy or the 
sentimental upward glance of the eyes that Perugino 
loves; his Madonnas never feel that supernatural long- 
ing, that devoted sacrifice with which the Umbrians re- 
present her bending over the Child. With a calmness 
that is almost indifference Mary holds the Infant upon 
her arm, as the mother of God, whom the Byzantines 
painted; or else she is a woman of the people, sitting 
with her child at the door of the church — having no 
wants and dreaming, as if stupefied by the glare of the 
sun and the sultry heat of the noonday. Perugino's 
Madonnas are shepherdesses, the sisters of Joan of 
Arc; but over Bellini's hover soft drowsiness and in- 
different indolence — the melancholy, tired character 
of the oriental spirit. There the inward and ecstatic 
glance of the sibyl, here the uncertain weary glance of 
the eye gazing dreamily over the lagoons. 

The landscape even heightens the dreamy repose of 
his pictures. For his early pictures, like Clrisi Crucified 
of the Museo Correr (Venice) or the Christ in London, 
do not give a true idea of his feeling for landscape. 
As in other respects, he was at that time a Paduan in 
landscape painting, and like Mantegna laid bare the 


6iovauni JBelltni 223 

skeleton of the earth, taking pleasure in the plastic 
execution of hard details. It was only gradually that 
the Venetian element entered his pictures. No longer 
with the eye of an investigator, but with that of a 
dreamer he gazed upon nature as the traveller ploughing 
quietly and noiselessly through the waves in a gondola. 
No waggon or footfall disturbs him and he sees no de- 
tails. Bathed in light, like phantoms of the fairy world, 
palaces and blue mountain chains rise up only to dis- 
appear. Bellini was the first to be caressed by the salt 
air of the lagoons and to realise the dreamy atmosphere 
which hovers over the coast of Venice. The mountains 
are bathed in bluish undulating clouds; the valley 
lies silently in the golden shimmer of the evening red, 
and the twilight spreads over the silent hills. One is 
reminded especially of Bocklin's fairy picture in which 
a slender nymph-like woman, encircled by a flowing 
white robe and holding a great globe upon her knee, 
reposes in a boat which, impelled by light winds, 
is gliding silently away. I know as little what it 
represents as the thousand others who stand dreamily 
before it. It seems as if the artist had painted his own 
life, which, unmoved by storm, also passed away as 
quietly and silently as a beautiful autumn day. Now 
that the evening has come, the water maiden takes 
him by the hand, leads him to the boat, and conducts 
him over the lagoons to the Island of the Blessed. 

In the works of this honourable patriarch we have 
also described the subject-matter of the many others 

VOL. I. — 13 


224 ^l3C IRcliotous IReaction 

who laboured partly as contemporary, partly as his 
pupils in Venice. Mary, with or without a following 
of saints, and occasionally another saint, who instead 
of Mary forms the central figure, are almost the only 
themes treated in the altar-pieces and the broad half- 
length pictures. Next to the Madonna — and this is a 
characteristic of the religious spirit of the age — St. 
Jerome plays the principal part: an old man repent- 
ant of his past and recognising that everything 
earthly is vain. 

A proud artistic spirit, mental sufferings, and buried 
hopes — such is the life history of Alvise Vivarini. As 
the last offshoot of the old artist family of Murano, 
he struggled for decades to hold the field beside Bellini. 
That gloomy and severely archaic art which Bartol- 
ommeo Vivarini had brought from Squarcione's 
studio to Venice was revived in his hands. Plastic 
strength and an almost ascetic simplicity are the 
characteristics of his early works: he loves the black 
cowl of monks, old wrinkled faces, and furrowed 
hands. His picture of St. Clara especially — an old 
abbess holding the crozier with a firm grasp — is so 
full of the sentiment of the cloister that one thinks 
of Zurbaran. But from being an opponent he become 
an imitator of Giovanni Bellini. After he had battled 
in vain for the Muranese ideals, he now wished to show 
that he could also do all that was admired in his oppo- 
nent; gave to his figures the weary droop of the head and 
the melancholy expression of Bellini's; and endeavoured 


aiovaimt Belltnt 225 

to be mild instead of harsh, tender instead of rough. 
This endeavour to feel with the sensibility of another 
became the tragedy of his life. At first sight one can 
hardly distinguish his paintings from Bellini's; the fea- 
tures of the enthroned Madonna are the same, the angels 
make similar music, and the mantle of Mary falls in 
the same soft, curved lines. The female saints standing 
about the throne seem the sisters of those who do 
homage to the Virgin in Bellini's paintings. Neverthe- 
less, a responsive chord is not struck by the pictures; 
one seems to feel that Alvise himself had the oppressed 
feeling of a man of compromise, who no longer ex- 
presses himself and could not equal his model. With 
Bellini everything is veiled and dreamy, animated by 
that great repose which flowed from the artist's soul 
into his works. Alvise, the awkward and struggling 
talent, lacking confidence in himself, does not achieve 
this effect. His colour remains hard and the sentiment 
sullen. Grudgingly he finally withdrew to die almost 
unnoticed. 

Even Cima and Basaiti, his pupils, had in the 
meanwhile deserted to Bellini. The only novelty in 
their works is the element of landscape. Cima da 
Conegliano, who in his Pieta in the Academy has a 
harsh Muranese effect, but later grew to be soft and 
lyric like Bellini, filled the narrow circle of his artistic 
activity with honest ability; he interprets contempla- 
tion and quiet solemnity in a simple and unpretentious 
manner, though less delicately than Bellini. He is 


2 26 Ilbc ll^eligtous fReaction 

independent in ihat he places the throne of Mary in 
the open landscape instead of in the gloom of a church. 
He was not a native of Venice but of the Alpine region, 
and this love of the mountaineer for his home is expressed 
in his paintings. He never misses a chance to represent 
the splendid mountains and valley in which he passed 
his youth, delighting especially in the wonderful, cold 
effects of autumn. A deep blue sky, harmonious in 
tone and full of gleaming clouds, melts into the green, 
brown, and blue colours in which the earth gleams. 
Quiet melancholy and idyllic peace are the prevailing 
sentiments in all his landscapes. 

Basaiti experienced a similar development. In his 
early works, like the Pieta in Munich, he endeavoured 
to surpass Mantegna in pathos; later he became mild and 
imitated Bellini in sentiment and colour, but without 
losing his individuality as a landscape painter. The 
coast of Illyria and Dalmatia whence he came is a bare 
and rugged country, sloping precipitously to the sea, 
whose wild ravines, narrow inlets, and steep cliff walls 
remind us of the fjords of Norway. The wild character 
of his home is reflected in the landscape background 
of Basaiti's pictures. Bartolommeo Montagna of Vi- 
cenza, a great and serious artist, may also be classed 
with the group halfway between Mantegna and Bellini. 
>With the artists described below there is no 
fonger a trace of Muranese influence; they stand 
from the beginning upon the ground prepared by 
Bellini. Scant justice has been done to Vittore 


(Biovannt Bellini 227 

Carpaccio by the general opinion, based upon the sub- 
jects of his paintings, that he was a pupil of Gentile 
Bellini. Next to Gentile he is esteemed the greatest 
epic painter of the school, as is evinced by his fresh 
narrative talent in the use of rich buildings, girlish 
heads, and trim figures of youth to compose gay and 
festive novels. Indeed .Carpaccio's best-known work, 
the cycle of the Legend of Si. Ursula, may be described 
with the same words as Gentile's paintings. The 
spectator takes part in diplomatic audiences; sees 
gondolas and richly pennoned ships riding the waves; 
gazes upon half classic, half oriental monuments, and 
before them, upon terraces and stairways, a festively 
adorned multitude: proud senators, elegant youths, 
beautiful women, musicians sounding fanfares, and 
gay banners fluttering in the breeze. He has created 
a fairy world of pompous palaces, picturesque cos- 
tumes, and gleaming waves. But herein also lies the 
difference between him and Gentile. While the 
latter painted architectural views with the dry eye of 
the illustrator, Carpaccio is a poet, who interweaves 
reality with the charm of a fairy story; leading us from 
the earth to dreamland, where there are only heavenly 
beings and pure feelings. He does not depict Venice. 
but rather the "courts of love" of Provence and of 
German legend, redolent with linden blossoms, peopled 
by slender princesses and enchanted king's sons. His 
pictures are fetes galanies, the scene of which is laid in 
paradise. As in St. Ursula s Dream in the Venetian 


228 XLbe IRelloious tReactlon 

Academy he has depicted the entire mysticism of 
Christianity, so his Presentation in the Temple and his 
Coronation of the Virgin are also of a delicate though 
painful beauty. Even the two courtesans sitting, 
in the picture of the Museo Correr, upon the balcony 
of their house, have been made angels by Carpaccio: 
street women with the soul of a Madonna. One 
almost believes that he had descended in direct line 
from that Johannes de Alemannia who had once come 
from the home of Suso to Venice. 

Of the remaining painters of this group, Andrea 
Previtali of Bergamo, who is probably the most nearly 
related in spirit to Giovanni Bellini, is sometimes 
surprising in the intimate, almost German character of 
his landscapes. The Martyrdom of St. Catherine, by 
Vincenzo Catena, is an achievement before which one 
lingers admiringly in the church of Santa Maria Mater 
Domini, not only because the landscape (a wide plain 
with the sea glimmering in the distance) is of such 
heavenly beauty, but because it so completely reflects 
the soul of this spiritual epoch. This maiden, 
about whose neck the millstone has already been bound, 
yet who makes no complaint and sheds no tears, bow- 
ing herself in silent humility to the will of God, is 
the incarnation of the triumph of soul over body. 

In contrast to the above masters, revolving like 
little planets about the sun of Bellini, an independent 
position is maintained only by the few who might be 
termed Venetian Netherlanders. Venice had, since 


/iDcmliuQ 229 

the beginning of its artistic development, been united 
by many bonds with the North. As Johannes de 
Alemannia had carried the style of Stephan Lochner 
to the Lagoons, so Antonello da Messina had in 1473 
brought the technique of oil painting from the Nether- 
lands. As the portraits of Giovanni Bellini sometimes 
appear Netherlandish, so Marco Marziale's name only 
is Italian, and his style as Flemish as if he had been an 
associate of Roger van der Weyden. Another bond 
between north and south was furnished by Jacopo 
de' Barbari, who painted the first purely still-life 
subject in the history of art — the partridge in the 
Augsburg Gallery — influenced Diirer at Nuremberg, 
and ended as a court painter in Brussels. 

1IJ. /iRcmldifl 

What Botticelli was for Florence, Perugino for 
Umbria, Borgognone for Milan, and Bellini for 
Venice, Hans Memling was for the Netherlands. 
In the quiet hospital of St. John at Bruges where 
he laboured, the battle-cry of the age of Savonarola 
became a soft and harmonious echo. 

Even after the appearance of Goes, there had been 
mockers in the Netherlands. The short-lived Geertgen 
van St. Jans occupies a similar position in the North 
to that of Piero di Cosimo in Italy. He is said to have 
lived in the priory of St. John at Haarlem, from which, 
however, it does not follow that he had the character 


230 Zbc IReliGious IReaction 

of a monk. In his paintings he appears as an exuberant 
young man — cracking jokes over rehgion and sticking 
out his tongue at the priests. Only once, when he 
painted the Bewailing of the Body of Christ (Vienna), 
did he succeed in remaining serious. In the cor- 
responding picture from the legend of St. John, he 
shows, by weaving quite burlesque elements into the 
subject, how heartily he made merry over these sub- 
jects of a distorted mediaeval view of life. The Em- 
peror Julian the Apostate, commanding the bones of 
John to be burnt, is the embodied king of the theatre; 
the grotesque grave-diggers resemble Brueghel's merry- 
andrews, and the knights of St. John attending the 
celebration look at the relics of their patron as if they 
were asses' bones. In the Amsterdam picture of the 
Holy Family, he has painted in the foreground the 
tenderest female heads, such as only a lover could 
paint, and behind them stupid-looking children in 
dressing gowns, and waddling, bow-legged choristers 
lighting a chandelier. It reminds one of Crabbe or 
Meine spoiling the sentiment of a poem by some 
low or trivial remark. Behind the enthusiastic Faust 
stands the mocking Mephistopheles. 

When Hans Memling lived times had changed. 
The parody and skepticism — the spirit of the opera 
houffe — had long been followed by romantic longing, 
and Thomas a Kempis had awakened new religious en- 
thusiasm in the Netherlands. 

A young and jolly comrade (so the legend relates), 


/IDemlino 231 

after a joyful wanderer's life, became a soldier, and 
while fighting under Charles the Bold at Nancy was 
severely wounded. Painfully he dragged himself to 
Bruges to sink unconscious at the gate of the Hospital 
of St. John, into which he was admitted and there hap- 
pily cured. Out of gratitude and without price, he 
painted for the hospital the pictures still to be seen 
there. Having fallen in love with the Sister of Mercy 
who had carefully tended him, like Tannhiiuser, he 
made a pilgrimage to Rome to find redemption, and 
died as a monk in the Carthusian monastery of 
Miraflores. 

As in many other cases, science has destroyed this 
beautiful legend. We know to-day that Hans Memling 
was a native of Mommlingen near Mayence, became a 
pupil and associate of Roger van der Weyden, and 
later figures as a wealthy burgher at Bruges. What 
a pity! History gathers in her dead, and the legend 
makes them immortal. Memling's pictures are more 
in accordance with his legendary character than with 
that of the owner of three houses at Bruges. No learned 
critic could characterise the essence of Memling's 
work more beautifully than the legend has done. His 
art actually resembles a quiet cell in which a sick man 
who had once galloped through the meadows, a trim 
soldier upon a white charger, now lived, wounded and 
weary. "Imaginez un lieu privilegie, une sorte de 
retraite angdlique idealement silencieuse et ferm^e, 
ou les passions se taisent, ou les troubles cessent. 


232 ZTbe IReltGious IReactton 

Oil Ton prie, ou Ton adore, ou tout se transfigure, ou 
naissent des sentiments nouveaux, ou poussent comme 
des lis des ingenuitds, des douceurs, une mansuetude 
surnaturelle, ct vous aurez une idde de I'ame unique 
de Memlinc et du miracle qu'il opere en ses tableaux." 
With these words Fromentin in his Maitres d'anirejois 
has described the charm of Memling's art. 

One cannot fully enjoy him in all his works. When 
he attempts to be strong, pathetic, or powerful, his 
talent does not suffice. This is true of the Crucifixion 
at Liibeck, and also in part of his Last Judgment. At 
least he has not depicted the terrors of 'the dies irce 
with the power of his teacher Roger, but with the child- 
ishness of Lochner. St. Michael, modestly weighing 
the souls, looks like a disguised maiden; and the damned 
approach the pit of hell with souls just as pure as all 
the dainty nude virgins ascending in single file to the 
gate of heaven, on the left. He is only great in sub- 
jects of youthful beauty and tender love. As in the 
legend, so in his works he appears as a natural en- 
thusiast, who, because his earthly love has scorned him, 
chooses a heavenly bride, Mary, rich in mercies, whom 
he celebrates with the rapture of a troubadour. In- 
describable in their girlish freshness and chaste grace 
are the women in his Betrothal of St. Catherine; and 
touching is the devoted piety with which he relates 
the Legend of St. Ursula. In contrast to the wide 
spaces, ravishing beauty, and festal attire of Car- 
paccio's treatment of the subject all is here childish 


HANS MEMLING 



THE MADONNA 

Vienna Gallery 


u 




/IDemlino 233 

simplicity, miniature daintiness, humility and peace. 
Even in the Martyrdom of the Virgins there is neither 
complaint nor fear of death. With folded hands and 
meek devotion, they depart from life with that be- 
lieving equanimity for which the terrors of death are 
only the foreboding of heavenly joys. 

Memling's difference from his Netherlandish prede- 
cessors is equally apparent. While Jan van Eyck was 
enamoured of the splendour of the world, and Roger, 
the painter of pathos, depicted careworn matrons, 
Memling's works are pervaded by a mild, lyric senti- 
ment, a breath of feminine blessedness: his fair angels 
with the long flowing hair, these slender figures of 
maidens and dreaming Maries. The traits are the 
same which distinguished Bellini or Borgognone from 
older masters like Pisanello or Tura. The difference 
between Memling and these Italian contemporaries 
is less obvious. From an external point of view the 
Netherlander is easily recognisable; he has painted 
  but a single picture, the Madonna of the Vienna Museum, 
which shows familiarity with Renaissance decoration, 
as is evinced by a round arcade opening to view and 
by the putii playing and holding a heavy garland 
hanging festively over the throne of Mary, Otherwise 
Gothic forms are the prevalent ones in his paintings. 
While the worldly-minded Jan van Eyck avoided this 
style, and reverted to the massive Romanesque figures, 
Memling, although he was familiar with the Renaissance, 
preferred the aspiring, ethereal Gothic, because it alone 


234 ITbe TReliGious IReactiou 

was in harmony with his slender, spiritual figures. 
Between Memling's women and those of the Italians 
there also exists that difference which Barr^s sketched 
in his Detix jemmes du bourgeois de Bruges. The Italian 
type is Mary, Memling's Martha; there the animated 
woman, here the good Cinderella. There, the broad, 
sultry lagoons, over the mirror-like surface of which 
gondolas glide to the music of the mandolin; here the 
narrow canals of Bruges, in whose cold water white 
swans bathe their snowy plumage. 

The rich Bruges which Jan van Eyck had known 
had already become a dead city when Memling painted 
it. The great house of the Medici had collapsed; the 
foreign merchants who had formerly traded there had 
gone elsewhere; the canals were deserted, and the palaces 
had fallen into decay. This poetry of solitude which, 
like the sentiment of the fable of the sleeping princess, 
pervaded Bruges, as it now pervades Rothenburg, 
hovers over Memling's pictures. He also gazed with 
the eye of a romanticist upon those defiant city gates 
and mighty churches, the proud survivals of a great 
past which towered aloft in an impoverished present. 
Even upon him the wide streets, once the scenes of 
festal processions, but now so useless and devoid of 
people, had a melancholy effect. 

But the memory of the Hospital of St. John — of 
whitewashed walls, white beds, and Sisters of Mercy — is 
awakened by his paintings. Borgognone is a monk, 
the man in a cowl who, tired of life, fled to nature and 


/IDemltn^ 435 

to her peace, and his pictures awaken the sentiment 
that one feels in driving on a fine afternoon from 
Florence to the Certosa. The pictures of Bellini have 
the effect which one experiences in passing from the 
sunlight of the Piazza into the incense-filled gloom of 
St. Mark's. Quite a different sentiment is awakened 
by the traveller wandering through the uneven, moss- 
grown streets of Bruges to the Hospital of St. John. 
A little gate is opened and he is led into a courtyard, 
where under ancient linden trees poor old men dream 
upon the benches in contemplative idleness. Beguines 
in black and red costumes and neat white caps come 
and go. There is something sad and resigned about 
these maidens, who live the lives of nuns, away from 
their families, and are transformed into such staid and 
serious beings by the life within these walls. Memling's 
pictures are pervaded by the sentiment of a hospital. 
One examines them with the same feeling which fair 
and sickly maidens arouse. It seems as if he had 
observed nature with the eyes of a sick man, sitting 
in his little room and looking through leaded glass panes 
into the joyful world. 

Why are the people who sat to him all so pale ? 
Why do they hold the rosary or a prayer-book, and 
fold their hands so thankfully? Why does the world, 
bathed in mild light, stretch out in such a solemn and 
Sunday attire in the background, so green and spring- 
like, as if the splendour of the first day of creation still 
rested upon it? They seem to be people who for the 


23^ XTbe IRcliGious IReaction 

first time step out of the oppressive air of the sick-room 
into God's own nature, just as the old men of the 
Hospital of St. John reahse, with thankful happiness, 
that the dear sun again shines upon them. Observe all 
the flowers and books which he loves to keep up in 
his pictures of the Madonnas. Does he not treat Mary 
like a sick child to whom one brings picture-books, 
elder-blossoms, and lilies? How touching are these 
flower-pots, looking as if they had been tended by a 
sick child, which Memling loves to place at the feet 
of Mary. The picture-books of which his pale maidens 
so abstractedly turn the leaves have the sentiment of a 
sick-room; as do also the windows so tightly locked that 
no cool draught may enter, and the enchanted bit of 
the world seen through the tiny window-panes. Nature 
is not thus enjoyed by one who has her always before 
him, but appears only to a sick man standing at the 
window so touching, so holy in her beauty. He sees the 
rider upon his white horse approaching along the lone- 
some road; he observes the reapers mowing in the 
cornfield; the waggon driver asking a passer-by for the 
road; and he rejoices in the swans paddling over there 
in the pond, and in the sheep reposing upon the sunny 
green meadow. A thatched hut standing lonely in a 
field, an old mill or a decayed wooden bridge stretching 
across gleaming water, is sufficient to fill him with 
thoughts and emotions. His maidens themselves have 
the beauty of a sick-bed; that fine and spiritual appear- 
ance which the atmosphere of a room gives to people. 


/IDemling 237 

Their features are mild and resigned, tiieir movements 
powerless and silent; and in touching coquetry they 
have donned their most costly garments and bedecked 
themselves with pearl diadems and with rings. Such 
thoughts, which others had long ago read in Memling's 
pictures, gave origin to the legend of the wounded 
soldier who lived as a sick man in the Hospital of 
St. John. 

The same charm of lovable silence, the same bashful- 
ness which anxiously avoids everything brutal, per- 
vades the Madonnas of Gerard David, who appears in 
all respects a continuator of Memling. He also loves 
women with high brows and bashful downcast eyes, and 
knows how to make the expression of thoughtfulness, 
of sublimity speak from these eyes. An altar-piece 
painted in 1 509 for the church of the Carmelite nuns in 
Bruges, which afterwards found its way to Rouen, is 
considered his masterpiece. His adoption in other 
paintings of the theme of the Madonna in a bower of 
roses, which had been so popular in the Cologne 
school, likewise shows how nearly related he was to 
Memling and Lochner. Mary and the other saints 
have that purity and dreamy thoughtfulness which 
enchants us in Memling's paintings; they sit motionless 
there as if rooted to the spot by the overflow of psychic 
experiences; they have experienced the holiest, but 
their lips are silent, as if they feared through loud 
words to disturb the solemn repose. A certain mel- 
ancholy foreboding and silent reticence hover over 


238 Zbc TReltgtous IReaction 

them, giving to Davids pictures also a touch of tender, 
dehcate reserve. Only in later works (he lived until 
1523) did his style change, in accordance with the 
changed sentiment of the time. 

f. XconarJJo 

The result of our studies has shown that Savonarola 
is in no wise to be considered as the grave-digger of 
art, but that the quattrocento owes to the religious 
movement which emanated from him the most refined 
and subtle works of art which it produced. It is 
true that through him the gods of Greece were ex- 
pelled from Italy, and that it was now all over with 
those narratives from the Old Testament and the 
legends of the saints which had served the realists 
as a pretext to depict the pomp and splendour of 
their time. In place of this, under the influence of 
increased emotional life, a new note came into 
religious painting. By reminding the artists that the 
highest aim of Christian art was to represent not 
the external but the inner world, the beauty not of 
the body but of the soul, he revealed to them the 
entire domain of the soul-life. In agitating against 
the worldly excesses of art he contributed to transform 
the realist's love of nature to a higher, more significant 
beauty. 

While the chief aim of the primitives had been 
portraiture, the masters of the age of Savonarola 


Xeonar^o 239 

created men who were indeed true to nature, yet an- 
imated by the breath of a higher hfe, and removed 
from everything earthly by the intensity of their 
emotions. A subjective idea of beauty took the place 
of the objective portrayal of nature. Whether the 
heads were more melancholy, as in the case of Bellini, 
more sentimental as with Perugino, or childishly good 
as in Memling's paintings — the command of form is ^ 
entirely subsidiary to the expression of the soul's 
emotion. The most intangible spiritual conditions 
were painted; such as the self-sacrificing melancholy 
of Mary, the prophetic inspiration of John, the agonising 
repentance of Jerome, the inspired faith of Ursula, the 
mystic fervour of Francis, the chaste devotion of 
Catherine, and the blessed ecstasy of the angels. 
After the conquest of nature accomplished by the 
realists the awakening of the soul followed. 

This awakening _alsa. changed the character of ^ 
portraiture. The painters following Pisanello and Jan 
van Eyck had with an acute realism painted merely the 
epidermis — the exterior of man, as he sat immobile 
in presence of the artist; but in the portraits of Mem- 
ling, Bellini, and Botticelli, the corporeal is no longer 
the highest aim. A breath of sadness or of dreamy 
thoughtfulness begins to animate the rigid heads. 
The emotional character or the fate of the subject is 
indicated by means of mysterious inscriptions or 
attributes, making the portrait a human document, a 
confession of the artist's soul or a reflection of his mood. 

VOL. I. — 16 


240 Hbe IRellQious IReactlon 

Corresponding with this physical effect in portraiture, 
a similar element appears in landscape. Although the 
realists had painted landscape backgrounds, the con- 
sciousness that it was in the power of an artist to 
reflect the sentiment of the action in the landscape 
had not yet been awakened. The two elements had 
been disconnectedly portrayed, the Entombment 0} 
Christ, for example, being depicted in the midst of a 
laughing spring landscape. Thej^ucceeding painters, 
however, as they had discovered the soul of man, 
discovered also the soul of nature. In accordance with 
the sentiment of the principal action the earth is 
pervaded by a joyful peace or by a silent woe. Man 
and nature are attuned to the same great chord. 

Greatly to the advantage of these new psychic 
elements, for which flowers and music were also very 
important, the views of colour were also affected by the 
revolution. In their pronounced realism the primi- 
tives had given to each object its own bright and full 
colours ; and after Piero della Francesca had discovered 
atmospheric effects, artists devoted their entire ability 
to mastering the most difficult problems of painting, 
the depicting of light and air. The masters of the 
epoch of Savonarola, less analysts than dreamers, 
went a step further. The objective presentation of a 
natural impression was no longer the final aim of 
Bellini and his associates; they attempted rather to 
make colour a means of expressing sentiment, thus 
discovering the intrinsic property of colour to awaken 


Xeonar&o 241 

effects akin to those caused by music. The outhnes 
are softened, a tender twihght veils the objects. The 
period of chiaroscuro thus begins. 

On the other hand, equally serious formal tendencies 

went parallel with these psychological and colouristic 

achievements. After Savonarola had forbidden the 

use of contemporary fashions, the ideal costume had 

regained its former importance, and the question of 

its artistic treatment arose. The study of draperies, 

which Mantegna had already emphasised, now became 

an important branch of art. The same religious ^ 

fervour led to the exclusion of all anecdotic and other 

details. At a time when the love of nature rather than 

the religious significance of the theme stood in the 

foreground, artists recognised no bounds in adding 

the most incongruous objects. Different episodes, past, 

present, and future, were represented in a single picture; 

and all kinds of accessory figures, having nothing to do 

with the action, were grouped about the principal event 

as disinterested spectators. The masters of Savonarola's 

time, in order to obtain a uniform impression of the 

whole, did away with all these accessories. A powerful 

simplicity took the place of disintegration. . For this 

reason even the form of the altar-pieces was changed. 

Formerly composed of a central picture, wings, predelle, 

and lunettes, they were now confined to a single panel. 

and every figure was excluded which had no part in the 

principal action. The presentation now resembles a 

lyric poem or a uniform drama rather than a scattering 


242 tlbe tReUoious IReactton 

epic. A psychic keynote pervades the whole and 
assigns to each figure its corresponding role. These 
changes furthermore led to new problems of composition 
which must be equally definite with the sentiment 
expressed. While formerly the figures had been ar- 
ranged as a frieze, the question now was to concentrate 
them, giving a base and an apex to the picture, and to 
express the dramatic unity of the event by a corre- 
sponding arrangement. Thus the aim of composition 
became that concinniias which Alberti declared as the 
ideal of beauty: a complete harmony of the different 
parts, so that nothing could be added or taken away 
without injuring the whole. The loose presentation of 
the earlier painters was replaced by a style involving 
a rigid arrangement; rhythmic simplicity and soft 
curved lines prevail. 

Adding together all the attainments of the epoch, 
it becomes possible — at least in part — to conceive of the 

^ mighty figure of Leonardo da^ Vinci, seemingly far 
removed from the earth, in his proper relation to the 
age in which he lived; and to understand how he as a 
psychologist, as a master of light and shade and as 
the founder of the laws of composition, grew out of the 
age of Savonarola. He attempted and achieved the 
solution of all problems proposed by the age. 

To begin with, he made the psychological problem 
proposed by Savonarola an object of scientific research; 

J the chapter in his Treatise on Painting which relates 
to it, as well as many anecdotes of his life, show how 


Xeonaroo 243 

much he was occupied with the study of expression.' 
In order to study sudden outbursts of feehng, he in- 
vited peasants to visit him, related adventurous 
anecdotes, and suddenly frightened them; he escorted 
criminals to the place of execution in order to see the 
terror of death reflected in their faces. In the so-called 
caricatures his aim is to exaggerate the peculiarities 
of the human countenance to the utmost extent of 
organic possibility but at the same time to portray 
with harsh directness all shades of expression. In 
like manner the heads which recur in his drawings 
are psychological studies. His ideal Js- not physical 
strength or voluptuous beauty, but the physical one of 
delicacy, softness, and dreaminess. He is continually 
searching for new nuances of quivering love, maternal 
joy, and childish delight. The freshness of youth is 
subdued to a soft melancholy, and the dignity of old 
age is transfigured by philosophical resignation. A 
commentary upon the heads which he painted are the 
hands. Even his master Verrocchio had heightened the 
charm of his youthful figures by the dainty pose of 
slender fingers. Leonardo, going further, uses the 
hands as a psychological commentary, assigning to 
them dramatic participation in the action. 

Besides the psychological problem, he was occupied 

' The best edition of Leonardo's Tiatiato della pittiira is in J. P. 
Richter's edition of his works ( 2 vols., London, 1883), which also 
contains an English translation. Others are by Ludwig in the Quellen- 
schiiften fi'ir Kunstgeschichte (Vienna, 1882), with German trans- 
lation, and by Tabarrini (Rome, 1890). — Ed. 


244 XTbe IRcUotous IReaction 

with that of colour. It is interesting to note that he 
was a distinguished musician. It is related by Vasari 
that even in his youth he had occupied himself with 
music, and learned to play the lyre; that he was called 
to Milan only because the duke found great pleasure in 
his lute-playing, and that upon this occasion he took 
with him an instrument, invented by himself, which 
softened the sound, making it so melting and euphonious 
that he surpassed all the musicians of Milan. As all 
painters who were also musicians — Giorgione as well 
as Gainsborough and Corot — loved soft and melting 
colours, it is no accident that singing and musical 
Venice witnessed the first triumphs of colour, and that 
the musician Leonardo was the founder of the real 
pictorial style. 

But as he was a mathematician as well as a musician, 
he solved as many formal as pictorial problems. In 
his Treatise on Painting he dedicated an especial 
chapter to draperies, advising that they should be 
studied from clay figures draped with cloths soaked in 
plaster of Paris; and he attained in his compositions all 
that his predecessors Perugino, Mantegna, and Bellini 
had endeavoured to accomplish singly. His sepulchral 
inscription states that the "eurhythmy" of the an- 
cients had been his chief aim. In such a versatility 
he stands out like a great gleaming sun at the boundary 
of two centuries. He rendered it possible to unite 
caressing charm of form with quivering emotion, and 
the formal beauty of the sculptures of the Parthenon 


ft- 


Xeonar&o 245 


with deep spirituality; he founded the pictorial style, 
and at the same time established new laws for linear 
composition — enough problems to occupy a whole 
generation of painters. 

The few pictures which he painted when no more 
important questions occupied his mind, and which 
he did not usually finish, but cast aside as soon as he >fi 
was himself satisfied with the solution of the problem, 
were in reality only illustrations for his Treatise on 
Painting; stray bits from the gigantic treasure-house 
of his soul. In the angels' heads of Verrocchio's 
Baptism of Christ, the keynote of Leonardo's art is 
given. For the first time we behold the dreamy, y 
melancholy eyes, the soft curly locks, and the quiet 
enigmatic smile, with which Leonardo's name is usually 
associated. In the female portrait of the Liechtenstein 
Gallery (Vienna)^ he is occupied with the problem of 
the demonic woman. In the presence of this pale 
face with its cruel almond eyes, one thinks of a mur- 
deress, of Lady Macbeth. These psychological char- 
acteristics are supplemented by the landscape; for it 
is no accident that behind this head, with its exotic, 
almost Chinese effect, an Asiatic plant, the bam- 
boo shrub, arises. In the Resurrection at Berlin the 

' This painting is more commonly (as, for example, by Berenson) and 
with greater probability ascribed to Verrocchio. The consensus of 
nearly all expert opinion is against attributing tlie Resurrection to 
Leonardo; and, as the author himself observes in his remarks upon 
Boltraffio, it should perhaps be ascribed to this master. (Below, p. 
932.)— Ed. 


246 ^be TRelioious IRcaction 

psychological elements are united with a new achieve- 
ment in composition. While earlier art depicted three 
guards about the sarcophagus of Jesus, Leonardo 
represents two youthful saints on bended knee in 
ecstatic adoration. The young deacon, bowing softly 
forward, raises his hands in fervent worship, while 
LucyjV/ith hands folded upon her breast, is quite lost in 
blessed ecstasy. The composition is so arranged that 
the figures form an equilateral triangle, and the 
Baroque Christ is an interesting parallel with these 
works of Filippino which also form a strong connecting 
link between the Dominican art of the fourteenth and 
the Jesuit art of the seventeenth centuries. 
The Last Supper, in the former convent of Santa 
J Maria delle Grazie, Milan, is a psychological drama. 
Earlier artists had depicted the disciples either sitting 
quietly at table or receiving the Host from the Saviour, 
without uniting them by any common thought or action. 
In order to bring unity into the action and to attain 
a motive which should vibrate like an electric shock 
through the whole representation, Leonardo adopts 
the words of Jesus, "Verily, I say unto you that one 
of you shall betray me," as a starting-point and shows 
how each individual disciple was affected by these 
words. Timidity, silent melancholy, sadness, horror, 
rising anger, listening, questioning, terror, indignation, 
curiosity, and pain are reflected in the heads and hands 
of the apostles in ever-renewed excitement. For 
Leonardo does not :onfme himself to facial expression, 




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Xeonar^o 247 

but makes the hands also assist in giving the highest 
animation to the dramatic scene. But this is not 
because it Hes in the nature of the southerner to "speak 
with his hands," as Goethe observed; for all Italian 
painters before Ghirlandajo made little use of gesture 
and seated their figures in the same repose as did the 
northern masters. If Leonardo makes them ges- 
ticulate, if one, as Goethe says, can read from the 
hands the words that each individual speaks, this is 
to be attributed not to the Italian national character, 
but rather to the circumstance that every epoch 
emphasises a particular artistic problem, and at that 
time mimicry and the language of gesture had become 
the most important field of study. His drawings also 
reveal how gradually the composition took shape 
in Leonardo's mind; how with increasing facility 
he succeeded in arranging all the single figures within 
the architectural composition; in creating and dis- 
solving contrasts, in changing motions of the lines 
lingering and again hurrying forward; and finally in 
harmonising all by means of an unexampled rhythm. 
As a pictorial achievement — in the manner in which 
the figures softly dissolved in space and the light 
streamed through the window into the half-darkened 
hall — the Last Supper must have been a revelation, 
although at the present time this can no longer be seen, 
but only felt. 
The Madonna of the Grotto,^ on the other hand, still 

There is much dispute as to the location of the original of this 


248 Ubc iReliatous IReaction 

gives an idea of Leonardo's treatment of colour. 
In this painting all the aims of the master sound 
together in rich accord. Again we see those beautiful 
faces, gazing in such blessed happiness: the Madonna 
bending dreamily over the Child, and the guardian 
angel as far removed from this earth as if he were 
listening to the soft, distant notes of a violin. It may 
be seen how Leonardo first arranged the whole in the 
strictly geometrical form of an equilateral triangle, 
and then immediately disintegrated this pyramid of 
lines by his treatment of the light; which, falling from 
the upper left-hand side of the painting, quivers like 
a soft chord through the enchanted twilight of the 
grotto, revealing one object in plastic relief, another in 
veiled picturesque haze. All sharp lines are dissolved 
and each detail vanishes with soft delicacy into the 
other. 

Of his later Florentine paintings the Madonna in the 
Lap of St. Anne^ is perhaps the one in which he carries 
his principles of composition the furthest. In order 
to bring the figures into the form of a pyramid he places 
Mary in the lap of St. Anne, bending over towards 

painting. Although some careful critics believe that the examples in 
the Louvre and the National Gallery (London) are both by the hand 
of Leonardo, the preponderance of expert opinion (Morelli, Miintz, 
MiJller-Walde, Richter, Berenson) attributes only the former to him. 
Professor Muther regards the London picture as a copy by Ambrogio 
de Predis. (Below, p. 333). — Ed. 

* The oil painting after this celebrated cartoon, executed in part by 
Leonardo, is in the Louvre; the cartoon in the Royal Academy (Lon- 
don) being a variation by him on the same theme.— Ed. 


Xeonart>o 249 

the Christ-child, who forms the basis of a pyramid on 
the other side. With this he has joined a new problem 
of Hght, While in the Madonna oj the Grotto a gloomy 
dolomite landscape is used to dissolve the pale faces 
and hands in the mild gleam of a delicate chiaroscuro, 
in this picture the heads rise airily and softly in a bright 
and quivering atmosphere. 

The smoke of powder and dust probably formed 
the atmosphere of the Battle oj Anghiari. The drawings 
after this lost mural painting only show the psy- 
chological and compositional problems which he 
attempted. The same master to whom the highest 
beauty seen by an artist since the days of Phidias had 
been revealed, is here the painter of raving madness 
and snorting rage, A hoarse, roaring sound is heard; 
men hack and thrust, horses rear, neigh, and bury their 
teeth in each other, in a Gordian knot impossible to 
disentangle. But, however impetuously everything 
is commingled, the great master of composition holds 
the masses firmly in hand. The crossed forelegs of 
the prancing horses form the apex of a triangle, within 
which all the other figures find a proper place. 

Even more complicated in arrangement, and almost 
Baroque in feeling, is the Adoration of the KingsA 
All former painters, placing Mary at one side of the 
picture, had represented the kings as approaching 

'This picture, in an unfinished state, survives in the Uffizi; and 
the world-famed Mona Lisa, mentioned below, is the pride of the 
Louvre. — Ed, 


2SO Xlbe IRellotous IReactton 

with stately tread from the other side. In Leonardo's 
paintings all is commotion. With great curiosity 
the people press forward, gazing, inquiring, wondering, 
adoring, and guiding others to the scene; hands are 
raised and heads stretched forward. At the same time 
he has changed the relief-like composition in profile 
which was formerly customary into the direct opposite. 
Mary again forms the apex of the pyramid, the base of 
which is indicated by the adoring kings. All about are 
contrasts dissolving into harmonies, and a waving mo- 
tion proceeding from Mary and streaming back towards 
her. 

Mqna Lisa, whose portrait occupied him at the same 
time, is as little beautiful as the Vienna portrait. 
She is uncanny with her missing eyebrows and the 
witch-like shimmer of her unfathomable eyes, deep 
as the sea; which seem to glance now passionately, 
then ironically, then false and catlike; soon they blink 
at us, then stare cold and dead into the infinite — 
soulless as the sea which yesterday swallowed men and 
to-day lies there seductively beautiful, mocking at the 
misdeed which it has committed. As he has in the 
Vienna portrait represented the perverse charm of a 
murderess he has here depicted the Sphinx's riddle of 
woman's nature. Vasari further relates that Leonardo 
while painting this portrait had singers and musicians 
present, that the young woman might enjoy their 
music and thus avoid the rigid appearance of most 
portraits. This also explains why the picture at that 


Xeonarbo 251 

time affected artists like a new gospel. However 
softly and tenderly Botticelli's maidens dream, they 
are not free from a certain expression of metallic 
rigidity; seeming more like costly artistic jewels than 
living and breathing people. But in this portrait, at 
one stroke, the fulness of life and the charm of mo- 
mentary expression had been attained. Painters 
marvelled how softly and mistily the figure arose from 
the background; they admired the nose which seemed 
to vibrate, the eye which seemed to blink, and the 
mouth which appeared to smile, and the bust seeming 
to breathe. The pale, nervous, and quivering hands 
form a commentary to the head, and at the same time 
serve the purpose of composition. By resting them 
firmly upon the waist, Leonardo has achieved the 
simple outlines of a triangle, the apex of which is 
the head, while the basic angles are indicated by the 
elbows. The landscape of the background echoes the 
mysterious mood of the entire painting. For although 
Piero della Francesca and Piero di Cosimo, improving 
upon the "medallion" style of early Italian portraits, 
had placed the figures in realistic landscape, it was 
reserved for Leonardo to make the landscape a psy- 
chical commentary on the figure. For this fantastic, 
blue-black world, sultry and gloomy, encircling the 
pale woman, is as mysterious and unfathomable as the 
being wandering through these meadows. 

It might be said that Leonardo had in this picture 
painted himself and his own unfathomable Faust-like 


^52 Z\K "IRellQious IReaction 

nature. As the sphinx Mona Lisa stands there in 
inpenetrable silence, so there is something sphinx-hke, 
demonic, and unapproachable in the nature of this 
man, who, an illegitimate son and a childless man, 
wandered lonely through life like a wonderful magician; 
great as an investigator, and even greater as the seducer 
who poured the sweet poison of sensuality into Itahan 
art; and who, after centuries, hurls at every one ap- 
proaching him with a critical probe the crushing words 
of the Earth Spirit: 

" Du gleiclist dem Geist, deii du begreifst, 
Nicht mir." 




m 

i 


LEONARDO DA VINCI 



MONA LISA 

Louvre 


Cbaptcr 111111 

Oermantc ipaiutlna burino tbe Bae of tbe 
IRetonnatiou 

•ff. Ube ^Beginnings of tbe fltallan Ifnfluence 

IN the same year that Leonardo da Vinci closed his 
eyes in the castle of Amboise, Michel Wohlgemuth 
died at Nuremberg. These names are typical 
of two different worlds: of the Renaissance and the 
middle age, of free artistic activity and the craftsman's 
handiwork. 

It has often been regretted that beginning with 
the sixteenth century German artists travelled south- 
wards and, like the emperors of the middle age, 
forgot their home for Italy. But they also forgot 
for a time in Italy the stifling air and the trivial caste 
system of the North. From philistine narrowness they 
had come into a land of freedom, into a happy en- 
chanted world; and from being sycophants, they had 
become lords. " Here the arts freeze," wrote Erasmus 
in the safe-conduct which he gave Holbein, and Dlirer 
"froze for lack of the sun" after his return from Venice. 

253 


254 6ermantc paintina 

The dream of his hfe was ended, and the cage of 
phihstinism again received him. 

It is touching to read the biographies of German 
artists of the fifteenth century. While the Itahan 
masters wandered upon the heights of hfe, as the 
"singer walks with the king," the German painter 
was a poor devil of the same guild with saddlers, 
glaziers, and bookbinders. First, he had to serve long 
years as an apprentice with the master; and then he 
entered into the trade by espousing the daughter or 
widow of a painter. There was no magnificent court, 
no aristocracy of distinguished connoisseurs. The 
patronage of art was in the hands of good burghers, 
who donated an altar-piece in order to buy their way 
into heaven. The panels, together with the necessary 
wood carving, were completed as well as might be in 
the workshop with the assistance of journeymen; 
and if upon the delivery they were pronounced well 
done, the wife of the painter received a pourboire. 

It is therefore hardly proper to speak of a style of 
German art during the fifteenth century. The problem 
was only to narrate a theme as clearly as possible and 
to impart strict religious instruction. This was done 
by the painters with rustic coarseness. It is not 
necessary to assume that they acquired their knowledge 
from Roger van der Weyden; rather, from the same 
requirements a similar style resulted. The problem 
was to be popular, drastic, and plastic; for which reason 
they applied the colours as thick as possible; screaming 


TIbe Utalian Ifnfluence 255 

instead of speaking, and exaggerating nature to the 
point of caricature in order to be understood by even 
the most stupid. The features are contorted; heavy 
tears and drops of blood flow, and sprawHng arms 
are stretched out; the participants strike, thrust, 
stamp, and spit in the midst of blood-curdhng scenes 
of martyrdom; and, as in the passion-plays, farces 
are introduced in order to please the sense of humour. 
If they cannot be impassioned the artists are at least 
soberly honest. There is no silent thoughtfulness, no 
ethereal grace; but everything is substantial, straight- 
forward, and of an honest, home-made morality, < 

It is a characteristic fact that Martin Schongauer, 
the chief master of Colmar, is better known from his 
line engravings than from his paintings. Not having 
the opportunity of expressing himself as a painter, 
he adopted the engraver's art. His Madonna at 
Colmar is harsh, severe, and of rugged power, but the 
smaller pictures of Mary at Munich and Vienna are 
modest and trusting. His best work, however, is 
his drawings. 

Wood engraving assumed a similar importance for 
the Nuremberg artists, who illustrating for the early 
printers discovered a field in which they could move 
more freely. In their altar-pieces they laboured as 
burghers, substantially and honestly. Until 1472, 
the largest atelier was that of Hans Pleydenwurff, to 
whom modern investigation has attributed a Crucifixion 
and a Marriage of Catherine in Munich, a Crucifixion 

VOL. I. — 17 


256 Germanic painting 

in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg, a Deposition 
in Paris, and an altar-piece in Breslau. Then Wilhelm, 
his son, whose principal work is said to be the Perings- 
dorflf altar of 1488, set up in business. By marrying the 
widow of the elder Pleydenwurff, Michel Wohlgemuth 
acquired his business also. In him the Germans of the 
quattrocento possessed the painter whom they deserved. 
The number of his works is enormous; there are 
examples at Munich, Nuremberg, Schwabach, Heils- 
bronn, Zwickau, and many other places. But whoever 
is familiar with Durer's portrait of his teacher — the 
head with the hawk's nose and cold, steely glance — 
knows also Wohlgemuth's paintings. With a healthy 
realism, more of a manufacturer than an artist, he 
approaches nature rigidly and crudely, and has a 
substantial manner of placing green beside red, and 
red beside yellow. Such an art was sufficient for the 
best spirit of his day. 

Nordlingen, Ulm, Memmingen and Augsburg should 
also be mentioned as seats of German artistic activity. 
In Nordlingen, Friedrich Herlin of Rothenburg, who 
had sought enlightenment in the studio of Roger van 
der Weyden, was much admired for his technical 
dexterity. Bartholomaus Zeitblom of Ulm is the type 
of the Suabian pastor, speaking slowly and thoughtfully, 
and carefully weighing every word. If he wishes to 
be fiery he becomes unctuous and his lyric poetry 
becomes dry common sense. With Bernhard Strigel 
of Memmingen this clumsy repose is transformed into 


HANS HOLBEIN THE ELDER 



MARTYRDOM OF ST. SEBASTIAN 

AlunicJi Gallery 


Ubc "irtalfan Unfluence 257 

Baroque exaggeration. The gestures are sprawling, 
the draperies puffy, and in his altar-pieces the same 
ruffled intricacies prevail as in the architecture of the 
expiring Gothic style. 

Hans Holbein the elder, of Augsburg, is the only 
real artist among these painters. He is accomplished 
and versatile, full of soul and nerves; and because he 
was an artist, his fatherland let him starve. His 
youthful works, the little Madonnas in the Germanic 
Museum, go back to the days of ancient idealism, 
to the art of Lochner, being of a soft and ecstatic 
beauty. Then he became the most extreme leader 
of the new naturalistic tendencies. Especially char- 
acteristic for this phase of his style are the passion- 
scenes of altars at Kaisheim and Donaueschingen. 
The most dangerous rascals of the road are his models, 
and his gallery of beauty is composed of convicts, 
harlequins and whimsical inmates of hospitals. Finally 
the clarification comes. In the picture of Si. Paul's 
Basilica in the Gallery of Augsburg, the man of storm 
and stress, who had only considered the hideous 
beautiful and the crazy as true, has become a serious 
man, who paints life with quiet objectivity. All 
the figures are modest portraits, among which the 
group representing the master himself with Ambrosius 
and Hans, his sons, is especially celebrated. With 
increasing age, his taste became purer and simple 
beauty his chief aim; his activity closed with a really 
classical work, the altar-piece oi St. Sebastian in Munich. 


2s8 Germanic pafnting 

The Renaissance decoration and the gleaming golden 
colour betray the cause of this last change of style — 
Italy. 

Not until they became acquainted with Italy did 
the quest of northern artists find a certain goal; 
and only through contact with the South did they 
realise that art means more than a substantial copy of 
nature. If during the fifteenth century the Nether- 
landers and even the Germans had exercised a fructify- 
ing influence upon Italy, this country now returned 
with interest what it owed to Johannes de Alemannia, 
Roger, and Goes. Thither the young artists made 
pilgrimages in order to refine their tastes; there they 
acquired that theoretical knowledge which the older 
painters had lacked, and became conscious of the 
dignity of their calling. 

They did not indeed relinquish the things in which 
they had delighted during the epoch in which van 
Eyck dominated northern art. After engravers of 
the fifteenth century, Schongauer and the master 
who signs himself E. S., had begun to represent scenes 
from every-day life, such themes were now made 
subjects of pictures. After van Eyck had carefully 
painted every bud and leaf, and Goes and Memling 
had followed with real landscapes as backgrounds, the 
study of landscape painting as an independent branch 
was now begun. In addition to this, painting mastered 
a third domain: the fantastic. As long as the spirit 
of realism prevailed, artists had painted only what 


XTbe Utalian IFnfluence 259 

they saw, looking with suspicious eye upon anything 
beyond this. But when, in consequence of the ec- 
clesiastical reaction, metaphysical tendencies followed 
the realistic, the fantastic element at once appeared. 
It was developed to an even greater extent in the 
North than in Italy, because the fantastic is a more 
important element in the northern than in the Italian 
character. The art of engraving, which, with greater 
facility than the brush, follows the spirit into the 
world of fable, became of determinative importance. 
After Schongauer in his Temptation of St. Antony 
had first modestly entered the territory the artists who 
followed him took possession of the entire legendary 
domain. 

Serious efforts to attain the mastery of form, on the 
other hand, went parallel with these "intimate" and 
fantastic endeavours, and the labour of investigation, 
which had been solved a generation earlier in Italy, 
began also in the North. By eliminating the episodic 
from the works of former painters and concentrating 
themselves, like the Italians, upon the execution of 
life-sized human figures, the northern artists attained 
a characteristic simplicity unknown to the fifteenth 
century. The study of the nude, heretofore little 
attempted, was raised to the rank of an artistic problem. 
Instead of harshness a uniform harmony of colour was 
adopted, and instead of a broad juxtaposition of detail, 
a well arranged scheme of composition. The crumpled 
fashionable costume of the day yields to a simple 


26o (Bermanic jPaintiuQ 

ideal drapery. Instead of being guided by accident, 
they laboured in accordance with fixed, theoretically- 
established norms. 

1F1F. Zbe IHetberlanDs 

Quentin Massys, the "smith of Antwerp," introduced 
the reform into the Netherlands. According to the 
legend he only became a painter because his sweetheart 
would not marry a smith; and although this sounds 
quite improbable, in the story, as in all legends, there 
lies a certain logical justification. When people used 
to the highly detailed brushwork of the old masters 
saw his mighty and broad technique, they necessarily 
sought for an explanation of this change in style, 
and found it in the supposition that the creator of these 
works had originally been a smith; a man with heavy 
fists and of great swinging movements, who introduced 
something of the vigour of his former trade into this 
new profession. 

Standing before his Burial of Christ in the Antwerp 
Museum, one feels that even to-day, with this work, 
a new epoch in the art of the Netherlands begins. 
Form, composition, and colour— everything is new. 
While earlier artists woiked in unbroken colours, 
placing full blues, reds, and greens in immediate 
juxtaposition, Quentin Massys subordinates this gleam- 
ing splendour to a uniform colour tone. The figures 
are given not in miniature form as formerly, but in 


OUEN'TIN MASSYS 



:he banker and his wife 
Louvre 


Zbc IWetberlanDs 261 

almost life size. Nothing episodic distracts from 
the principal action; and the problem solved by 
Leonardo in his Last Supper — the portrayal of a 
complicated scene as a uniform drama, complete in 
itself — has also become determinative for the Nether- 
landers. Along with these psychological efforts he 
attempts also the solution of the formal problems 
of Leonardo. However different the movements of 
his figures are, he has arranged them with reference 
to a strict scheme of composition. 

His other works also, like the Holy Family in 
Brussels, the Madonna in Berlin, and the Pietci in 
Munich, are quite without the bounds of ancient art 
in their greater size, more graceful movements, and 
broader draughtsmanship; they form the connecting 
Unk between Jan van Eyck and Rubens. Half 
figures, which are especially frequent, resulted as a 
logical consequence of the tendencies of the master. 
Not wishing to depart from his life-size scale, as 
such figures would have demanded canvases of 
colossal proportions, he preferred in all cases of re- 
stricted size to confine himself to half-length figures 
rather than to diminish the scale. 

His genre pictures likewise belong to this class. 
What Petrus Cristus had indicated in his St. Eligius, 
Quentin Massys carried out. In his Goldsmith and 
his IVife of 1518, now in the Louvre, he did in reality 
nothing more than omit the halo which Petrus Cristus 
had given to St. Eligius. While this may seem a 


262 (Bennantc painttno 

very small service, it was nevertheless a decisive step; 
for through it the genre picture was recognised as an 
independent variety of painting. It is true that 
Quentin himself, as well as his predecessors Jan 
Massys and Marinus van Roymerswasle, did not venture 
to dispense with all ecclesiastical accessories. After 
painting had for a thousand years been strictly re- 
ligious, such a change of repertoire could not be 
accomplished at one stroke. Even though it were 
only for appearance' sake, the artist was compelled 
to preserve a certain connection with the Bible. In 
the picture above referred to the wife of the goldsmith,- 
although her glance lingers upon the gold, carries a 
dainty prayer-book adorned with miniatures in her 
hand. Succeeding painters proceeded to change the 
prayer-book for an account-book, and to transform 
the goldsmith and his wife into attorneys, merchants, 
misers, and usurers. But even in such cases a biblical 
content is assumed. In his picture at Vienna at least, 
the words of the parable of the unjust steward are added 
and, what is more, such paintings are not independent 
representations, but pendants to the equally numerous 
representations of St. Jerome. The joy in worldly 
goods depicted in the pictures of money-changers 
serves to emphasise their moral: all is vanity. In 
contrast to paintings representing man in the midst 
of his wealth were others warning him of the transitory 
character of earthly things. Gradually the pictures 
of St. Jerome disappeared and the biblical morals of 


tTbe 1Retberlant)s 263 

the others were forgotten. Pawnbrokers and ad- 
vocates, surrounded by papers and documents, sit 
in their offices collecting money or produce from their 
clients; broadly painted genre pictures take the place 
of the original allegories. The expression of the 
heads was also changed. It had usually been con- 
torted into passion, because an art occupied principally 
with the pathetic scenes of the passion of Christ 
unconsciously transferred this pathos to subjects of 
every-day life; but now these forced grimaces gave 
place to a quiet business expression. 

The Chess Players, by Lucas van Leyden, is es- 
pecially characteristic of the pathetic element in the 
earlier genre pictures. The people act not as if they 
were assembled about a gaming table, but about the 
cross of the Saviour. The attention is especially 
attracted by gesticulating hands, indicating some 
remote connection with Leonardo. Lucas proposed 
a similar problem to that solved by Diirer in his Christ 
with the Scribes and Titian in his Tribute Money. 
It is, by the way, difficult to recognise the aims of 
this intelligent, early deceased Dutchman. The de- 
terminative event of his life seems to have been a 
journey to Italy. Although so few paintings by him 
are preserved, he furnished rich inspiration to other 
artists in his engravings. Those highly-finished, 
thoughtful heads which we shall see in the works of 
the master of St. Severin are already to be found in 
the prints of Lucas van Leyden; and by his genre 


264 (Bermanic patntinos 

paintings of dentists, surgeons, vagabonds, and the 
like, he prepared a way for later genre painters like 
Ostade and Brouwer. 

Another Dutchman, Hieronymus Bosch, made him- 
self a name as a visionary. All those grimacing im- 
ages which were customary in mediaeval decorative 
art, especially in the stone ornaments of Gothic cathe- 
drals and the wood carvings of the choir stalls, were 
transferred by him to panel painting. He is especially 
fond, as was Teniers at a later day, of giving fishes 
the wings of bats and of creating strange monstrosities 
by commingling the forms of animals and vessels. 
Any one expecting the fantastic in our sense of the term, 
the daemonic and the ghostly, would be bitterly 
disappointed: for his paintings have not a fantastic, 
but a burlesque or rather a didactic effect. His 
practice of giving them the form of an altar is char- 
acteristic of their significance. Whether he represents 
the Sei^en Deadly Sins, the Ship of Fools, the Pleasures 
of the World or the Temptation of St. Antony, it is 
always a sermon beginning with the fall of man and 
ending with hell. At the same time that Luther 
threw the inkstand at the devil, the last representation 
of the devil as the middle age conceived him passed 
away with Bosch. At a time when gluttony and wild 
sensuality had followed upon the former mortification of 
the flesh, he swung, as did Hogarth later, the heavy 
moral club, practised the art of " hanging people in 
colours," and painted the same Capuchin sermons with 


I 


Ube 1Pletberlau&s 265 

which Sebastian Brant. Geiler von Kaisersperg, and 
Thomas Murner regaled their hearers. 

Like Quentin Massys, he was also fond of painting 
biblical scenes in half-size figures, in which he appears 
as a sharp and malicious physiognomist. His line 
engravings, Gluttony, Avarice, and Drunkenness are 
further examples in which low genre painting, though 
under an allegorical cloak, ventures forth. Themes 
like the dance of the cripples, surgical operations, 
and quack doctors became especially popular in 
painting. 

For the beginnings of landscape painting Hendrik 
Bles and Joachim Patinir are important. Both passed 
their youth upon the picturesque banks of the Maas, 
where wooded hills alternate with green meadows and 
sloping valleys, and here their art received its char- 
acteristic imprint. It is true that they could not yet 
take the decisive step of being exclusively landscape 
painters. As in the older genre painting, so in land- 
scape the religious element was still preserved, and by 
its presence excused the innovation. Yet one feels 
that, although they paint biblical subjects, the heart 
of the painters was elsewhere. Even their choice of 
subjects is determined by the point of view of the 
landscape. St. Hubert, sinking on his knee before 
the wonderful stag, or the Vision of John at Patmos, 
the FHght into Egypt, and the Adoration of the Kings, 
are almost the only themes, because they give an ex- 
cuse for depicting a rich woodland scene. 


266 Oermanic ipaintincj 

A particularly interesting painter is Hendrik met de 
Bles. Though his spindly, elongated figures are often 
mannered, his mannerism exercises an unusual charm. 
A painting by him at Antwerp is especially noteworthy 
because it portrays, in quite modern fashion, nature 
reduced to the service of man. In the foreground 
there is a lively street with rolling-mills, blast furnaces, 
and a smithy where labourers are hammering; behind 
this a cliff crowned by a castle, and in the distance the 
ocean enlivened with ships. A subordinate group of a 
man leading a horse upon which a woman with a child 
is sitting is all that indicates the subject of the picture: 
the Flight into Egypt. 

Patinir, whom even Durer had called " the good 
landscape painter," worked along the same lines ex- 
cept that he piled together more details, a partial 
result of his youthful enthusiasm. As the profession 
of a landscape painter was not yet acknowledged, it 
was considered necessary to make nature more in- 
terestmg than reality by exaggeration of form and ad- 
dition of detail ; and it was supposed that more friends 
could be won for the cause if nature was exhibited in 
rich Sunday adornment. On the other hand, this 
tendency also reveals the same realistic trend and en- 
deavour to be correct which had originated with 
Bouts. As the subjects were biblical, they sought to 
invent a suitable landscape, one different from what 
they saw about them. As no painter had yet gone 
to the Holy Land (this was not done until some years 


XCbe Cologne Scbool 267 

later by Jan Scorel), they endeavoured to adorn 
fantastically the nature about them, and to compose 
imaginary landscapes from given Flemish motives. 
The luxuriant tree-tops, wide views of rivers, sand 
dunes, and horizons with the sea which they saw at 
home were enlarged, multiplied, and joined with 
abrupt, jagged cliffs and wild Alpine heights, under the 
impression that the painting thereby received a bib'ical 
and oriental imprint. 

fllfff. Zbc Cologne Scbool 

As one can travel in a few hours from the Netherlands 
to Cologne, so the transition between the art of the two 
schools is almost imperceptible. Of many painters 
who were active in Cologne it is impossible to say 
whether they were natives or Netherlanders; the 
development of its art in both places from 1480 until 
1 5 10 is identical; leading from Roger through Memling 
to Quentin Massys and Lucas van Leyden, and ending 

' Most of the paintings mentioned in this section are in the Cologne 
Gallery, where the school can be most satisfactorily studied. As the 
names of the painters are not generally known, they are usually called 
after their principal work with which critics first become acquainted. 
Among such works mentioned in this treatise, the Lyversberg Tassioii, 
the altar of Sts. George and Hippolytus, the Glorification of Mary, the 
Holy Kinship, and the Death of Mary are in the Cologne Gallery; and 
the Master of St. Severin derives his name from an altar in the church 
of that name at Cologne. The Masters of the Life of Maty and of 5^. 
Bartholomew are named after pictures in the Munich Gallery; while 
the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet is so called because this cabinet 
contains the greatest number of extant prints after his engravings. — Ed. 


268 (Bermanic painttnG 

with the ItaHans. The first impulse of the painters 
of Cologne to desert the paths of Stephan Lochner 
was due to the influence of Roger van der Weyden. 
After his return from Italy Roger probably tarried 
in Cologne, and although the altar-piece of the Three 
Kings in the church of St. Columba is not by 
him, but by Memling, it is certain that relations 
existed between Roger and the principal city of the 
Rhine, 

Without the great dramatic painter of Brussels the 
Master of the Lyversberg Passion is inconceivable. 
He relates his stories with crude directness, his favourite 
theme being martyrdoms in which rude soldiers as- 
semble with brutal love of torture about the Redeemer. 
In like manner the Master of the altar of Saints George 
and Hippolytus endeavours to equal Roger in wild 
passion. Emaciated, angular figures, with sharp, 
almost caricatured, features jostle each other and 
push forward in the midst of bright landscapes, exe- 
cuted in Roger's style. For, as we have already seen, 
the influence of Roger did not last long. The final 
quarter of the fifteenth century — the age of Perugino 
and Bellini in Italy, and of Memling in the Netherlands 
— was a gentle lyric age. This trend of the century 
is also followed by the Cologne painters. As in 
southern Germany Schongauer developed from a 
sincere imitator of Roger into a sensitive lyric painter, 
the Cologne artists, instead of traversing further the 
paths of realism, returned to those of Lochner. Solemn 


XTbe Cologne Scbool 269 

religious devotion and tender ecstasy take the place 
of crude pathos. 

In the Master of the Life of Mary we can clearly 
follow the change. Only in his Christ Crucified does 
he endeavour to be pathetic like Roger; then Memling 
becomes his guide. As his Adoration of the Kings is a 
free copy of Lochner's altar-piece for the cathedral, 
so in his Virgin in the Temple there is a woman taken 
directly from that altar. Returning finally to Lochner, 
he created in the Life of Mary, to which he owes his 
name, a lovely idyl of a delicate, archaic character. 
The tender, maidenly figures in their slender, sensitive 
beauty, the simple and clinging ideal drapery, and the 
solemn golden background enveloping the figures — 
all show a return to the ideals of Stephan Lochner, 
which, in their dreamy beauty, were especially suited 
to the mystic, pious spirit of the time. The other 
themes which he treated are characteristic of the same 
spiritual tendency: like his Madonnas in bowers of 
roses, such as Master Wilhelm had already painted, 
maidenly, modest, sensitive and tender; or the Bewailing 
of the Body of Christ, full of a deep sustained grief and 
of that mild quietude which fears by a loud word or 
an eager gesture to disturb the holiness of the hour. 

The Master of the Glorification of Mary is a more 
prosaic and sensible gentleman, and cannot therefore 
follow so unconditionally the new romantic and 
ecclesiastical tendencies. Although he retained the 
type of Stephan Lochner, it was without the latter's 


2 70 (Bermanic palntincj 

sensibility and loveliness; and his visionary themes are 
painted with rustic clumsiness. The heaven radiates 
in golden splendour, but over landscapes representing, 
with dry objectivity, Rhenish scenery or panoramas of 
entire cities. 

All the more delicate, almost like that of a Perugino 
of Cologne, is the sentiment of the Master of the Holy 
Kinship. The prevailing effect of his paintings is one 
of mild beauty and sentimental softness. Even when 
he occasionally depicts dramatic subjects, like the 
Crucifixion or the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, he does 
not leave the domain of soft elegiac sentiment. As 
he lived until 1509, it is not impossible that he may 
have seen paintings by Perugino; he occasionally 
paints palm-groves, which he could not have seen in the 
North. At all events, the similarity of expression of 
the elegiac spirit of the epoch in North and South is 
remarkable. Like Perugino, the Master of the Holy 
Kinship is not capable of depicting manly strength; 
like the Umbrian he avoids everything harsh and 
all dramatic action; and under his hands everything 
acquires the sentiment of "smiles amidst tears." A 
quiet peace and a gentle weariness is spread over 
nature. 

It is certain that the Master of the Death of Mary 
visited Italy. Although a born Netherlander, he was 
active in Cologne and finally settled at Genoa. His 
development corresponds with this activity, beginning 
with Memling and later resembling Mabuse. In his 


r 


XTbe Coloone Scbool 271 

earlier paintings, women with tender, pale faces, 
and men with mild, soft features live in the midst of 
peaceful landscapes, over which the warm, even light 
of springtime is spread. As with Patinir, one gazes 
through portals in the cliffs upon moist and green 
declivities, and over the heights upon warm valleys 
and ancient ruins. He resembles Memling, as in his 
interiors, which are scenes of comfort and repose, 
so also in his aristocratic taste for costumes which, 
while almost coquettish, are yet quite free from 
detailed or overloaded adornment. When he visited 
Italy at a later period, his taste became even more 
clarified, uniting the grandeur of the Italian style 
with German sentim.ent. 

Two other artists, who preceded the Master of the 
Death of Mary, are the most interesting of the entire 
group. For them also parallels can be found in the 
Netherlands; they would hardly have painted those 
rugged monumental figures had not Quentin Massys 
preceded them ; and in case of the Master of St. Severin, 
the influence of Lucas van Leyden is also perceptible. 
They stand there, nevertheless, as strange figures and 
lonely spirits — a delight to him who seeks not the 
regular but the unusual. 

What a bold and reckless talent is this of the Master 
of St. Severin ! Without trace of the mild beauty 
of the Cologne masters, the figures stand gaudy and 
stiff, like the kings of playing-cards. Yet with the 
angularity of the primitives he combines a quite 

vov I. — 18 


272 Germanic patntincj 

modern psychological acuteness and an intensity of 
expression which no contemporary possessed. In- 
stead of being satisfied with representing the maidenly 
or conventional in woman, he represents her as she is 
and has been made by life, with all the ugliness of 
deviating forms and with suffering or hardened features. 
And his men — what rugged figures are these ancients 
with the weather-beaten countenances, these apostles 
with heads of modern scholars! No other painter of 
the day has succeeded in rendering such well-executed, 
strikingly thoughtful physiognomies. The skulls are 
very high, and the forehead is boldly rounded, as in 
the case of chess-players; the eyes are set with heavy 
rings like those of people who have studied throughout 
the night; the lips are pale and drawn down as if 
in nervous exhaustion. Modest chin beards lengthen 
the bony countenance, which has an over-exerted 
and tired expression. In strange contrast with these 
spiritual heads are the damask mantles and brocaded 
clothes, the glittering crowns, sparkling sceptres, and 
swords. Even the treatment of the hair is individual. 
It does not seem natural, but sits like a wig upon 
the head, and the forehead is encircled by hairs stiff 
as a horse's mane. This strange combination — the 
reflective thoughtful heads and the mummeries of 
costume — creates the impression of standing before a 
primitive carnival or modern living pictures adapted 
to biblical scenes. One looks like a fantastic sea-king, 
another like Shakespeare's King Lear; here we are 


TTbe Cologne Scbool 273 

reminded of Norwegian fables, there of Klinger and 
Eduard von Gebhardt. With this fantastic costume 
a strange and visionary colour-scheme is often united. 
In contrast to the hard and gaudy hues of his con- 
temporaries, the pictures of this master often reveal 
flashing and gleaming, glimmering and sparkling 
effects, corresponding with the fabulous character 
of the representations. At the close of his life he 
achieved a statuesque grandeur which almost reminds 
of Signorelli. Nude putti play about the pillars; the 
colour is uniformly light and cool; the drapery falls in 
mighty folds and the line is solemn and reposeful. 
A great psychologist, a great painter of light, and one 
of the founders of the monumental style — such is his 
place of honour in the history of German art. 

The Master of St. Bartholomew forms the logical 
conclusion of the artistic activity of the Cologne 
school. In its four hundred years of culture it had 
gone through all the stages of artistic experience from 
ecstatic mysticism to laughing worldliness and festal 
sublimity. The Master of St. Bartholomew appeared 
at the time when piety was changed into hysteric cant; 
when pleasure in colour was followed by weary absten- 
tion; and when art returned from a surfeit of expres- 
sion to the style of mediaeval sculpture, that it might 
by archaizing attain new and piquant charms. The 
sculptors of the age of Hadrian, who sought to express 
in the severe forms of primitive Greek art all the sen- 
sation<^ of their own jaded epoch, and the paintings 


274 (5ermantc patntlno 

of Carlo Crivelli. who at the dose of the quattrocento 
resurrected Byzantinism, are the corresponding par- 
allels—all sons of a dying culture which had spoiled 
its stomach for ordinary nourishment and found taste 
only in the pungent flavours of novelties. 

It is hardly possible to enumerate all the elements 
to which the paradoxical, tasteless, and yet fascinating 
effect of the pictures of the Master of Si. Bartholomew 
is due. Like living figures of sandstone in rigid, 
statuesque repose, his saints stand before us, their 
cold limbs clothed in the most magnificent vestments 
Pearl diadems are woven into the luxuriant reddish 
blond hair of the women, and dragons, looking strange 
as enchanted human beings, accompany them. Putii 
in the Italian style flutter in the air; rich brocaded 
carpets hang behind the figures, over which the eye 
glides to bright, grey-green plains and gleaming blue 
hills. A strange contrast to this modern feeling for 
nature is afforded by his Baroque ornamentation and 
the Gothic architecture seemingly chiselled by a 
goldsmith's hand, and also between the precious 
gleaming accessories and the cold neurasthenic colour 
of the remainder: a sallow, yellow carnation imparting 
to the figures a corpselike and half-decayed appear- 
ance, and the pale tones of the green, yellow, and grey 
clothing. But most fascinating of all is the over- 
refined sentiment and the affected grace of movement. 
One thinks at the same time of the most ancient and 
the most modern painting; of the sandstone figures 


XTbe ColOQwc Scbool 275 

arising so solemnly on the pillars of Gothic cathedrals 
and of Fernand Khnopflf' s Sphinx grinning perversely 
as a stony archangel clutches her brow. But Leonar- 
do's Mona Lisa, and that pale woman of the Lichten- 
stein Gallery with the cold almond-shaped eyes, also 
come to mind. As in both cases it was the sphinxlike, 
enigmatic, and uncanny that tempted Leonardo, so a 
similar thought seems to have hovered before the 
Master of St. Bartholomew when he created those 
female heads, which with their broad brows, thin eye- 
brows, and cruel cheekbones seem caricatures of saints. 
Their little mouths with the teasing dimple are full 
of desire, as if pouting for a kiss; affectedly they bend 
and stretch their bony, pointed fingers, and draw back 
the thin bloodless lips as though they were laughing 
over some doubtful remark which the saint opposite 
them had just whispered. At the same time, it will be 
remembered, Cologne was the home of the obscurantists, 
a brood of stealthy hypocrites who during the day 
knelt before the pictures of saints, in order that they 
might in the night celebrate the secret orgies of the 
black mass. The same tendency in art seems to be 
expressed in the infernal, satanic element of these 
paintings. "> 

Along with Cologne, Mayence appears to have been 
a principal seat of artistic activity at the close of the 
century. Here also there lived an artist who has 
much to say to us moderns; an artist as rich in chivalric 
grace as in individual romanticism: the sympathetic 


276 Oermanic painting 

unknown Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet. He had 
long been known as a hne-engraver, in which technique 
he reminds one of Rops, when he shows woman as 
the ruler of the universe, making a beast of the greatest 
philosopher and causing the most pious king to grovel 
in the dust before idols. There are indications of 
Schwind and Bocklin when he depicts wild men and 
nude young women dashing across the moor upon a 
unicorn or a hart. The sentiment of a northern ballad 
pervades the gloomy print representing a young man 
festally crowned with grape leaves in his curly hair, 
glancing over the glowing meadow, while Death, not 
the usual skeleton but an old man with withered body 
and tired, pitiful features, suddenly blocks his way 
and looks him long and deeply in the eye. Yet this 
same brooder also observed life with a quick eye, and 
painted quarrelsome peasants, ragged tramps, and half- 
starved village musicians with the acuteness of a 
Rembrandt. Even more did the aristocratic world, 
with its elegance and chivalric strain, find in him a 
knightly poet. He has depicted tourneys, stag and 
falcon hunts: crashing trumpets sound, horses neigh, 
dogs bark, and the startled game runs gracefully away. 
He has succeeded quite as well with the sweet game of 
love. What tender, unspeakably lovely little prints 
are those in which the young gallant sits, sedately 
chatting with his sweetheart, while about them roses, 
tulips, and flowers of all kinds are budding and filling 
the air with perfume. 


Ubc Cologne Scbool 277 

Whether it is by accident or because a real relation 
existed between them, one cannot examine the works 
of the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet without 
thinking of Leonardo. Did he wander to upper Italy 
from Constance, where he remained for a time, or did 
he in some other way learn of the enigmatic genius 
who was at that time revealing new beauty to the 
South ? At all events, his charm and his delicate 
feeling for beauty resemble the Italian as much as they 
are unlike the German art of the period. His slender 
youths with elastic, yet soft and sensual bodies; the 
modest delicacy of his young women; their luxuriant 
locks framing the face with soft ringlets, their dreamy, 
softly sensual eyes and the expression of ineflfable 
sweetness which transfigures their faces — only in the 
drawings of Leonardo are similar things found. In 
his pictures, also, which have lately become known, 
he is recognisable by the coquettish costume, the 
charming types, and the delight in wreaths and flowers. 
His portrait of two lovers (Gotha) is probably the 
most beautiful of all old German portraits. This 
fine, fashionable youth with his long, fair hair crowned 
with wild roses, and this bashful maiden with the rose 
in her hand, listening so dreamily to the languishing 
whispers of her lover, are graceful to their fingertips, 
even for a modern eye. A ray of the blessedness of 
the women sung by Walther von der Vogelweide, 
and also a ray of southern sunlight, has fallen upon 
this delightful work. 


, 


27S (Bermantc ipalntlno 

nun Diirer 

In southern Germany Nuremberg remained the cen- 
tre of artistic activity. Like Wackenroder and Tieck a 
hundred years ago, the traveller is still strangely moved 
in treading the streets of the ancient city on the Peg- 
nitz. The venerable churches, the uneven streets, and 
the solemn patrician houses seem still peopled with 
picturesque figures in the quaint caps and head-dresses 
of that great period when Nuremberg was "the crowded 
school of the fatherland's art," when an overflowing 
spirit of art flourished within its walls, and when the 
masters Hans Sachs, Adam Kraft, Peter Vischer, 
Albrecht Durer, and Willibald Pirkheimer were alive.' 

True, there is still much Romanticism in this en- 
thusiasm. How trivial and philistine seems the 
development of German art compared with its mighty 
progress in the Itahan republics! Maximilian, the 
last of the knights, gave all manner of commissions, 
but in his chronic financial need he was unable to pay 
the artists. Although Cardinal Albrecht of Mayence 
ha^ the high ideals of an Italian Maecenas, the troubles 
of the Reformation prevented him from carrying out 
his plans. How small and poor do the commissions 
of the Fuggers, the Imhoffs, and the Holzschubers 
appear in comparison with those of the Medici, the 
Tornabuoni and the Pazzi! German art would have 
remained a craft, and confined itself to imparting 
religious instruction by means of altar-pieces, if the 
artists themselves had not sought and found the means 


H)urec 279 

of raising themselves on the wings of genius above 
the age and the world. 

Durer, especially, owes his splendid achievements 
not to his fatherland, but to himself alone. Only in 
the works which were no commission, in which as a 
poet he stands outside of the public, is he free and 
great. That which really makes him a classic is to be 
found not in his paintings, but in his wood and copper 
engravings. In recognising the specific value of engrav- 
ing and making it technically capable of conquering 
the entire domain of fantasy, he loosed not only his 
own but the age's tongue. In these arts he appears 
in the fulness of his genius, and reveals the "collected 
secret treasure of his heart." The germs of the creations 
of Cornelius, Ludwig Richter, Schwind, and Bocklin 
in our own day, lie in the works of Durer, the most 
profound and powerful painter-poet recorded in the 
history of art. 

The fact that his career began with the Apocalypse, 
the representation of wild, fantastic ideas hardly possi- 
ble to express in art, is characteristic for the tendency 
of his genius. In his hands even that which is contrary 
to nature found organic presentation. Like an uncanny 
dream, like a ghostly face, the gnostic vision passes 
before our eyes. But at the same time that he v/as 
labouring with the Apocalypse, the Life of Mary took 
shape in his mind; and the daemonic artist of the world 
of revelation transformed himself into a refined, soulful 
story-teller, whose pleasant idyls, woven out of German 


28o (Berinanic Ipainting 

country life, German houses, and German furniture, 
made the life of the Mother of God as simple and 
intelligible as that of a woman of old Nuremberg. 
He is equally celebrated as the poet of the story of 
Christ. Even before Luther had thought of his 
translation of the Bible, Durer had translated the 
gospel for his people and had made the Roman-Asiatic 
types of Christianity homelike and familiar to the 
German people. 

While in the popular technique of wood engraving 
he treated simple themes comprehensible to the people, 
his line engraving reveals an aristocrat and a humour- 
ist. One thinks of Schwind, when Durer tells of St. 
Genevieve, St. Hubert, and all tthose weather-beaten 
hermits living with the deer and the squirrels in the 
midst of the German forest ; of Bocklin in his Rape of 
Amyone, or the Ahdiiction upon the Unicorn — those an- 
tique prints pervaded by the magic breath of fable, in 
which the clear spirit of Hellenism is so strangely united 
with northern sentiment. His Nemesis, the Knight with 
Death and the Devil, St. Jerome, and Melancholy are 
world-known examples of DLirer's profound, struggling 
art. Like the deep furrows in the countenance of 
Melancholy, this brooding woman, his art is deep and 
serious; revealing the struggles of a mighty spirit m 
an enigmatic, unfathomable world, in which the 
vibrating thoughts of a great genius labour. 

Lest one should think Durer was only a brooder, a 
reticent and unapproachable spirit, one has only to 


Biirer 281 

read his letters, pervaded by the same crude and homely 
humour as Luther's Table Talk. One has only to 
glance at his marginal drawings for Maximilian's 
Prayer-book to observe that this serious man could also 
laugh mischievously, and that this philosopher was a 
convivial and joyful being. This universality is the 
extraordinary thing about Dtirer's nature. Although 
a poet who was seemingly quite lost in the world of 
ideas, he was at the same time an observer to whose 
sharp eye the wide world was revealed. The Munich 
portrait alone shows the thinker, the visionary, and the 
brooding spirit whose art furnished four centuries with 
profound enigmas to solve. In the others, painted 
at an earlier period, he is a bold and joyful young man, 
who, like Rembrandt, takes childish pleasure in a 
pretty jacket, a coquettish cap or a handsome garment. 
As an artist he is just such a mixtum composiium 
of the most diverging elements. The same man who 
could be so brooding and abstract had also a sense for 
everything that concerned the world; and far from 
living away from it, he created works which made him 
the forerunner of the "intimate" art of the following 
century. His simple drawings of popular life assure 
him first place by the side of Quentin Massys among 
the pioneers of genre painting. His studies of animals 
did not fmd their counterparts in painting until 
Rembrandt's Carcass of an Ox a hundred and twenty 
years later; his studies of plants and flowers are 
pages from the book of that impartial realism which 


282 Germanic ipaintiuo 

passes all boundaries of time. Pansies, columbines, 
meadow grass, bindweed, plantains, violets, and dan- 
delion — he draws them all with such astonishing grace 
that his aquarelles might belong to the present instead 
of the sixteenth century, and to a Japanese artist as 
well as to Diirer. In like manner all his landscape 
drawings pass chronological bounds; they might just 
as well have originated in the circle of the most modern 
of artists, the Impressionists. If in any respect at all 
he was in advance of his time it was as a landscape 
painter; for he accomplished what the Master of the 
Amsterdam Cabinet had attempted, and prepared the 
way for that which Elsheimer, and, after him, only 
the present age again attained. 

But Diirer did not confine himself to observing na- 
ture with an impartial eye; he wished also to ascertain 
the laws governing her appearance. Beside the poet 
stands not only the realist, but also the investigator, 
the scholar, and the theorist. Heretofore northern 
artists had proceeded in a purely empirical manner. 
Trusting entirely to the eye, they were correct when 
they saw correctly, but erroneous when their vision 
deceived them. Diirer was the first to proceed as the 
Italians had done from empiricism to knowledge; and 
through the learned works written at the close of his 
life, he created for Germany the scientific basis which 
Alberti and Leonardo had furnished the Italians. 
'^ As for Leonardo, so also for Diirer painting was only 
a form of expression used occasionally when no other 


Diirer 283 

thoughts filled his mind. Even with the palette in hand, 
he remained a brooder. If those only are to be con- 
sidered painters who afford delight by the harmony 
and beauty of their colour, Diirer can hardly so be 
considered. His works are entirely lacking in colour 
sense; gaudy and hard, rather written than painted, 
they afford little pleasure to the eye used to colour 
eflfects. Just as in his graphic works art signifies 
nothing more to him than a form of speech for the 
expression of thought, so when he labours with the 
brush, he is occupied more with spiritual or formal 
than specifically pictorial problems. 

The psychological problem most interested him in 
the many portraits which he painted from the days 
of his apprenticeship to the last years of his life. 
Aside from the portraits of princes, those of Frederick 
the Wise and the Emperor Maximilian, and of a few 
councillors of Nuremberg and merchants of Augsburg, 
he was seldom occupied with commissions. He 
painted only those who were related to him in mind 
or in heart or who seemed to afford an interesting 
psychological study. Like Rembrandt, he practised 
upon himself; he portrayed his father, the hearty old 
goldsmith, and the thin and hollow-eyed countenance 
of his brother, the tailor Hans; painted Michel Wohl- 
gemuth, his aged master, and created in Holzschuher 
the type of a whole generation; that rugged and warlike 
race, whose king was Luther and who effected the 
Reformation. From the purely pictorial standpoint his 


284 (Bermanic painting 

portraits are examples of the same miniature paintings 
which prevailed in the Netherlands in the days of 
Jan van Eyck. Every wrinkle, hair, furrow, and vein 
is depicted with documentary fidelity. While in 
Holbein's drawings the lightest pen stroke is applied 
like a brush mark, Diirer paints as if he were making 
pen strokes with a brush. While Holbein, in great, 
sure lines, seizes upon that which is lifelike in appear- 
ance, Diirer does not progress beyond laborious efforts, 
and seeks by the addition of details to establish the 
sum of character expressed in a head. But whatever is 
lacking in facility or vvorkmanship is atoned for by 
his intellectual greatness. Just because he so far 
surpassed in intellect the dashing and brutal Holbein, 
the latter's portraits, notwithstanding their skilfulness 
of technique, seem like photographs alongside of 
Diirer's characteristic, spiritual heads. There the cold 
analyst reflecting the exterior of his subject with the 
infallible certainty of the camera obscura; here the 
brooder and thinker, who lends to his sitters something 
of his own Faust-like nature. 

In his religious pictures Diirer was dominated 
partly by psychological, partly by formal problems; 
and the very fact that he made such problems the 
starting point raises him above his surroundings. 
All artists before him in Germany felt themselves 
artisans, and fulfilled each commission as well as they 
could without higher ambition. Diirer was the first 
to raise art above the handicraft and to feel himself 


il 


ALBRECHT DURER 



^lidO/t 


PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF 

Prado, Madrid 


2)urcr 285 

an artist; he created not because he received com- 
missions, but because a power within him cried out 
for expression; he put his whole soul into his works, 
and had the feehng that he was working for eternity. 
Italy had shown him how great was the difference 
between handicraft and art. 

When his activity began, the rigid and constrained 
style of Michel Wohlgemuth dominated the artistic 
life of Nuremberg. Diirer lingered in his workshop, 
but only like the king's son in the fable who, losing his 
way, had wandered into the charcoal-burners' hut. 
As soon as his apprenticeship was over, he dissolved 
the bonds which had connected him with the school 
of Wohlgemuth, and chose masters who were spiritually 
nearer to him. His first mentor, as is shown by the 
small Madonna of the Cologne Museum, was Schongauer. 
Then he disappears for a time from view. For if the 
altar-piece at Meissen and the Flora of the Frankfort 
Museum be assigned to this period, it would mean that 
during his youth Diirer had adopted the manner of 
Jan Scorel as well as that of Bartolommeo da Venezia 
with quite astonishing surety. We do not stand upon 
sure ground until his next works, inspired by Mantegna. 

Upon his arrival at Venice in 1494, Mantegna's 
prints, of which he had copied two, opened his view 
into a new world. To this great master he did homage 
in his first altar-pieces; almost as an imitator in the 
small Dresden altar-piece and more independent in 
his Bewailing of the Body of Christ, which even in 


286 Germanic painting 

subject is connected with the Paduan school. In the 
Nuremberg as well as the Munich work, there is no 
loose juxtaposition as in Wohlgemuth's painting, but 
a rigid composition. In the iatter's work the tough 
metallic tone, the stony grief-stricken appearance of 
Mary, and the pathos of the old toothless woman 
raising her arms with a wild cry of grief show how 
much Mantegna's style and figures dominated Durer's 
thoughts. 

When he developed from the creator of the Apo- 
calypse into the poet of the Life of Mary, these Padu- 
an elements were relegated to the background, and 
the painter of pathos became an idyllic artist. In the 
Birth of Christ in the Munich Gallery as well as the 
Adoration of the Kings at Florence, the Holy Family 
is placed in a ruin, full of corners and affording all kinds 
of interior and exterior views. Mary, with her fair 
hair protruding from a white head-dress, is the youthful 
and pretty Nuremberg maiden of the Life of Mary. 
Instead of harsh and emotional, he is quiet and mild — 
a transition from Mantegna to Bellini. 

His development is the same that the art of Venice 
experienced at the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
When Durer lived at Venice in 1494, the chief paintings 
which he saw in the churches were the products of the 
school of Murano, and of Giovanni Bellini, both inspired 
by Mantegna. But when he returned to Venice, in 
1 506, Bellini had adopted his soft and harmonious style. 
The people thronged before his altar-pieces, and 


HJiircr 287 

Durer also experienced the same change in taslc. 
"The thing which so well pleased me eleven years ago 
does not at all please me now": in this passage of his 
letters he announces that for him also the Muranese 
were a thing of the past, and that he no longer con- 
sidered Alvise Vivarini but Bellini as the greatest 
artist of Venice. 

The Festival of the Rosary now in the Rudolphinum 
at Prague is the principal evidence of his admiration 
for Bellini. As he himself had softened under the 
blue Venetian sky, so his art lost its rigidity and con- 
straint. A soft, lyric tone, a rhythmic line, and 
something lovely even in his colour betrays that while 
painting the picture he was looking not at the crisp and 
pointed gables of northern houses but into the quiet 
watery mirror of the lagoons. The Madonna with 
the Goldfinch also, although characteristically done, 
would have been no strange note in the midst 
of the full round tones of Bellini and Cima. Even 
the nude entered into his studies; and the delicate 
miniature-like Christ Crucified, at Dresden, shows 
that the art of Antonello had touched a sympathetic 
cord. 

In addition to this Verrocchio also impressed him. 
For many of his line engravings, like the Knight with 
Death and the Devil, the Little Horse, and St. George, 
were evidently conceived under the influence of the 
Colleoni monument which had recently been erected 
in Venice. In another direction he was inspired by 

VOL. I. — IJ 


2GS Germanic paintlno 

Leonardo, whom he met in Bologna.^ The content 
of DUrer's Christ Disputing with the Doctors (Barberini 
Palace, Rome) is derived from the painting ascribed 
to Leonardo in the National Gallery (London); it 
belongs, with Titian's Tribute Money, to that series 
of works which were created under the inspiration of 
Leonardo and treat the problem of characteristic heads, 
using the hands as a psychological commentary. 
From the tender smile playing about the portrait of a 
Young Woman in the Museum at Berlin and the 
Female Head in charcoal drawing of the Louvre, 
as well as from the " crazy coutnenances" which Durer 
was so fond of drawing, it is evident that the caricatures 
of Leonardo pleased his brooding spirit. 

The further development of DUrer after his return 
home in 1507 is vacillatmg. Although his angular 
late Gothic taste sometimes appears, he endeavoured, 
wherever the theme permitted, to attain rhythmic, 
graceful movement and unity of composition; and 
while he never thought of casting aside his own senti- 
ment in favour of a strange one, he is nevertheless 
conscious that realism is not necessarily identical 
vv'ith monstrosity and abnormal ugliness. 

It is quite characteristic that immediately after his 
return from Italy he painted the life-size figures of 
Adam and Eve, now in Madrid. Although both are 
thoroughly German in conception, he would not have 

' It is usually assumed, in the absence of conclusive favorable evi- 
dence, that no such meeting took place at Bologna. — Ed. 


Diirer 289 

painted them had he never been In Italy; for his pleas- 
ure in the nude and the rhythm which he endeavours 
to attain in both figures are thoroughly Italian. The 
same figures of the Ghent altar-piece are rigid and 
angular, creating the impression that Jan van Eyck 
had seen only nude, northern models without bodily 
charm. In contrast to this coarse-grained ugliness 
there is free and rhythmic line with Dcirer, In contrast 
to the pure planimetric contours, filled with colour, of 
former German art, he endeavours, in the sense of 
Verrocchio, to give the figures bodily roundness and to 
create effective contrasts in movement. As a pupil 
of Leonardo he is no less occupied with psychological 
analysis. Adam longingly opens his lips, and a quiet 
smile — Flaubert's " Oh si tu voulais I " — plays about 
Eve's hps. 

In his next work, the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand, 
painted for Frederick the Wise, and now in the Vienna 
Gallery, he falls back upon the realism which had 
previously dominated German art; but in the Heller 
altar-piece he reapproaches the aim that since his 
Italian journey had hovered before him. The groups 
of the apostles are simply and carefully composed, and 
in place of contemporary costume he has adpoted 
simple, ideal draperies, the studies for which might well 
be confounded with similar studies by Leonardo. 
He also shares with Leonardo the quality of avoid- 
ing undue emphasis upon the formal. Although the 
soles of the feet and the hands are drawn with the 


2r,o Oermanlc IPalntincj 

assiduous exactitude of the primitives, he remained 
a psychologist in the manner in which he makes his 
portrait heads types of character. 

In the Trinity of the Vienna Gallery (151 1) he has 
attained the exact opposite of the style of Wohlge- 
muth. Where in the latter's works one sees the 
wrinkled folds of wood statuary, Durer's draperies 
are simple in arrangement and graceful in move- 
ment. In his own portrait, which he has introduced 
into the background, he no longer wears the cos- 
tume of the day, but a long and simple cloak. Where 
Wohlgemuth shows a confused conglomeration, with 
Durer a solemn eurythmy of line prevails. In con- 
trast to the older German form of an altar with 
wings, Durer, in the manner of the quattrocento, has 
united the picture in a single frame rounded at the 
top. 

Several other works which originated in the following 
years (both Madonnas and subjects like the Lucretia 
at Munich) contained nothing new. The only in- 
teresting point is how the recollection of the mosaics 
of St. Mark's lives in his memory. Not only in 
the Munich portrait of himself, in that of Charles the 
Great at Frankfort, and his powerful woodcut the 
Head of Christ, but in several Madonnas, he has 
returned to the Byzantine tradition of full face; in 
order, no doubt, to attain solemn and monumental 
effects. 

Not until the close of his life was he able to unite 


H)urer 


:29i 


in a single great work the result of all his efforts. 
His journey to the Netherlands in 1520-21 furnished 
a new incentive to the imposing simplification of his 
art. He saw the paintings of Quentin Massys with 
their powerful life-sized figures, and the altar-piece of 
Ghent. "That is a delightful, comprehensible painting, 
and especially Mary and God the Father are excellent " : 
this passage of his diary shows the path he afterwards 
followed. As at the same time the young artists of 
Florence studied no longer Gozzoli and Pisanello but 
the works of Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, so 
Durer no longer admired the miniature painting of 
Jan, but the powerful figures of Hubert van Eyck with 
their solemn and mighty draperies, thus approaching 
the same style which the artists of the sixteenth 
century learned from Masaccio. Several wood en- 
gravings enable us to follow the problem as it ripened 
in his mind. Simple and lonely figures, impressively 
conceived and executed, take the place of the charming 
beings which had formerly lived so modestly in de- 
lightful landscapes. 

But the greatest revelation is in his mighty series 
of the Four Apostles, oi 1526, long in the Rathaus 
of Nuremberg, but now in the Munich Pinakothek. 
According to ancient tradition, the " Four Tempera- 
ments " are represented ; and the fact that the series 
was thus explained shows how much real temperament 
and character reposes in each one of these Titans. 
Like Leonardo, Durer followed a double aim. He was 


292 (Bermanic iPaintlncj 

probably attracted by the problem of characteristic 
heads ; the saints formerly pious and contemplative, 
become meditative and thoughtful men. On the 
other hand, as in the case of Leonardo, the psychological 
are accompanied by formal tendencies. The powerful 
characterisation of the heads corresponds with the 
statuesque character of the bodies; and in this com- 
bination of psychic power with monumental grandeur, 
the Four Apostles are something unique in the history 
of art. Although similar figures occur in the altar- 
pieces of Giovanni Bellini, Cima, and Mantegna, they 
lack this formal simplicity and majestic, statuesque 
repose. Others, like Fra Bartolommeo at a later 
period, do not possess the spiritual grandeur; their 
mantles no longer invest a thinker but are hung ac- || 
cording to academic rules over hollow lay figures. 
Albrecht Diirer, like Leonardo, solved the problem of i 
uniting the deepest intellectual content with formal 
beauty and psychic grandeur. 

ID. jfranconia anO JSavaria 

In the midst of his time Durer stands like a giant, his 
feet rooted in the earth but his head reaching to the 
stars. A monument dedicated to German art of the 
period of the Reformation would have a colossal statue 
of Durer as its central figure; all the others would sit as 
figurines in sockets at the foot of the monument. 
Although they are indeed lovable and sympathetic 


ALBRECHT DURER 



SAINTS PAUL AND MARK 

MunicJi Gallery 


jfranconta nnt> JSavarfa 293 

men, the name Little Masters, which is appHed to 
them, characterises their relation to Durer. Following 
the all-embracing colossal genius who had dominated 
reality as well as dreamland, came the diadochi who 
divided his world-empire, ruling their little principalities 
as well as they might. 

Some, inspired by the humanistic movement, devoted 
themselves eagerly to the antique legend, others to 
depicting the culture of the epoch. They wandered 
about the yearly fairs and markets among the peasants 
and burghers, revealing the scenes of popular life with 
primeval crudity. The picturesque figures of weather- 
beaten lansquenets, market women, maidens and 
distinguished ladies, peasants, young dandies and 
aged noblemen, kirmesses, weddings, and banquets — 
such figures and scenes defile past us in their prints. 

But it was not only in the graphic arts that this 
development took place. The achievements of paint- 
ing signify less an advance than a retrogression into the 
old craftsman's ways. There was neither emperor, 
nobility nor bourgeoisie with appreciation for the 
problems which Durer proposed; and when later, on 
account of the Reformation, German intellectual life 
adopted a petty trend and lost itself in dreary and 
colourless quarrels, the tender flower of art must have 
frozen in this icy atmosphere. 

Hans Suss of Kulmbach is a mild and pleasing 
master, much like a descendant through a feminine 
collateral line from Dijrer's harsh and manly art. 


294 Germanic jpaintin^j 

Hans Schaufeieln, the illustrator of Herr Thuerdank, 
fulfilled honestly, as might have been expected from 
a master-painter of Nordlingen, his numerous com- 
missions. Barthel Beham, who had visited Italy, 
loved to fill the backgrounds of his paintings with 
rich Renaissance buildings. Anton Woensam of 
Cologne, untouched by the Renaissance, expressed 
himself in exaggerated late Gothic forms; with the 
archaic harshness which forms the characteristic 
feature of his works, he combines Baroque gesture 
with wrinkled, puffed draperies. 

When speaking of German art one longs to hear the 
rustling of the German woods, to breath the fragrance 
of their ozone, and see nymphs and wood-sprites roving 
through the thicket. Faithfulness, inwardness, and 
an appreciation of the spirit of the wood seem to us 
characteristic of German art. We think of hermits 
sitting, oblivious of the world, before their caves; 
of green meadows and flower-strewn hills; of gloomy 
woodland slopes and pleasing valleys through which 
shimmering waters ripple. The fresh ray of the morn- 
ing sun breaks through the light green of the young 
birches, and leaping from branch to branch changes 
into diamonds the gleaming dewdrops, and into gold 
or precious stones the beetle comfortably crawling in 
the soft moss. 

" Da gehet leise, nach seiner Weise 
Der liebe Herrgott durch den Wald." 

Because these things are found with Schwind and 


dfranconia anb ifiSararia 295 

Thoma, they seem the most characteristically German 
among modern artists; and for the same reason, among 
the older artists Altdorfer stands nearest to us. 

He was a lovable, truly German master, whose pic- 
tures are redolent of pine forests, and in their sleep- 
iness and cosy sentiment strike a confidential and 
homelike chord within us. He began as a miniature 
painter. At the close of the fifteenth century Berthold 
Furtmeyer, who also lived in Regensburg, painted 
fragrant mountain ranges and the play of sunlight 
with fine feeling. Altdorfer was the first among the 
Germans to apply the delicacy of miniature to panel 
painting. His little pictures, therefore, seem curiously 
out of place in German painting of the sixteenth 
century, which still saw its chief task in proclaiming in 
large altar-pieces the doctrine of Christian salvation. 
But Altdorfer did not labour for the church. For 
miniature painting had since the days of Gutenberg 
become an aristocratic luxury; and Altdorfer, as a 
painter for amateurs, produced not altar but little 
cabinet pieces, intended not for religious edification but 
for artistic enjoyment. It is for this reason that one 
so gladly lingers before his works. As he laboured 
for the aristocrats of taste, he could go so far in advance 
of his time that many of his pictures, in their freshness 
of conception and sparkling colour, affect us like 
forerunners of the most modern painting. 

In a classification of his works in accordance with 
the problems attempted, the first group would be 


296 (Bermanic ipaintino 

formed of those in which architectural features are 
combined with landscape. For Altdorfer was not only 
a painter but city architect of Regensburg as well; 
and he enthusiastically adopted all architectural and 
ornamental forms which at that time were introduced 
from Italy into Germany. He therefore inserts into 
his picture representing the Flight of the Holy Family 
into Egypt a splendid fountain, which might well adorn 
the court of a Renaissance palace. For the same reason 
the scene of Susanna's Bath is laid in the neighbourhood 
of a great palace, which in its gay splendour surpasses 
all the fantastic designs of contemporary German 
architects. 

The second group is composed of panoramic views 
over broad plains, of which the Berlin picture illustrat- 
ing Beggary sitting upon the Train of Arrogance is the 
most striking example. A princely pair, upon whose 
trailing mantles a family of beggars sits, makes brilliant 
entry into a Renaissance palace, which is balanced to 
the right of the painting by a dark mass of foliage; 
and between the two the eye sweeps over a hilly country 
upon habitations, streams, and castles. Altdorfer 
therefore uses the same artistic device which Piero 
della Francesca had applied before and Claude Lorrain 
adopted after him. By painting dark curtains in 
the foreground, he achieves the possibility of making 
the distance appear lighter and more spacious. 

To the third group belong the pictures in which, 
progressing in the paths of Gerard David, he attempted 


jFranconla an& Bavarfa 297 

to interpret certain effects of light. In his Crucifixion 
the heaven is veiled with dark, curiously coloured 
clouds, through which gloomy lighting he endeavours 
to render the sad parting feeling of the hour. In his 
Assumption of Mary the whole heaven is bathed in a 
fiery purple, as if a gleaming world of joy and mag- 
nificence were opened. Through the same skilful 
handling of light, he even succeeded in transforming 
in an artistic sense the most tiresome commission 
which he had received, Alexander's Victory. While 
the other battle-pieces at that time ordered from 
Bavarian artists by Duke William IV. and now united 
in the Munich Pinakothek do not rise above the 
character of coloured wood-cuts, Altdorfer spread a 
bright morning hght over the sea, the hills, and the 
battle-field, playing in reddish gleam upon the pinnacles 
of the castle and leaving the other parts of the landscape 
in gloomy shadow. Armour, uniforms, and banners 
flash and sparkle in the sunlight. Not until the 
seventeenth century did another German, Adam 
Elsheimer, paint the action of light in an equally 
delicate manner. 

But his most beautiful paintings are those which 
conduct us into the depths of the German forest. 
His name need only to be mentioned to remind us of 
the woodland, where sunbeams dance upon the tree- 
trunks, hermits sit beside their caves, or woodland 
gods repose upon green moss. No one before him had 
painted real woodland life. While all others had 


298 (Bermanic ipaintincj 

remaine at the entrance of the wood, Altdorfer was 
the first to plunge, hke a miner, into the green shaft. 
The branches of the trees closed over him and the blue 
heaven disappeared; but he saw the sunbeams rustling 
through the green leaves and the moss spread like a 
velvet mantle upon the earth. 

Even to his drawings, wood-cuts and etchings his 
delight in the German forest gives a unique charm. 
While Durer in his marginal drawings on Maximilian's 
Prayer-book confined himself to clever scroll-work, 
Altdorfer sought by his trees, branches, and foliage to 
transport the reader into the silence of the forest. 
In the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian his prints, 
the Train of Prisoners, may be recognised by the 
German pine woods forming the background. How- 
ever different the content of his etchings may be, a 
tall and splendid tree, whether fir or pine, is added 
as though it were the artist's monogram. The thick 
foliage and the heavy hanging branches of the pine, the 
thread-like roots, and the half-dried creepers winding 
about an ancient wall are more attractive to him than 
a biblical or legendary theme. 

In pictures of this kind the figures are a matter 
of indifference; one only observes the woodland 
landscape enclosing them. Here in a green cave a 
family of satyrs has nested; there the wild solitude 
of the forest moves Jerome's heart to repentance; 
or St. George, riding through a beech forest, has 
met the dragon. Neither the heaven nor the treetops. 


Ifrancouia anO Bavaria 299 

but only the foliage is visible. For the first time in 
the history of art the depth of the forest, as in our own 
days Diaz painted it, was revealed. Finally Altdorfer, 
to crown his life work, painted a picture which was a 
pure landscape, without any figures. Hanging, like 
his St. George, in the Munich Pinakothek, this earliest 
German landscape shows a simple bit of nature, de- 
picted with the faithfulness of portraiture. Here all 
time limits are obscured, and one seems to gaze upon 
the works of a modern painter — a deep, blue sky 
rising above a green clump of trees ; a little lake, a 
narrow footpath winding over the meadow, a bluish 
mountain and a few houses — such is the content of this 
painting. All that had previously originated in this 
domain had maintained at least an external connection 
with religious painting; and when the landscape at 
first timidly appeared in altar-pieces, in order to have 
a justification for its existence it retained, even at a 
later period, the biblical figures. Even Patinir uses 
nature as a mere foil for the religious subjects; and 
although in his aquarelles Durer had rendered in- 
dependent landscapes, in panel paintings he did not 
venture to break with tradition. Altdorfer did, and 
through this he became the precursor of the great 
landscape painters of the following century. 

Even in the sixteenth century he was followed, 
although timidly, by a few other masters. Augustine 
Hirschvogel and Hans Sebald Lantensack are known 
as etchers of spirited, quite modern prints, while 


300 (Bermanic patntino 

Michael Ostendorfer attempted by light effects to 
impart sentiment to his pictures. Since his St. George 
of the Marcuard collection has become known, Melchior 
Feselcn of Ingolstadt appears as one of the most 
interesting painters of the epoch. For this picture, 
with its Maree horse, its Nickelmann dragon, and 
its Corot tree, combined with the delightful cosiness and 
story-telling sentiment of the whole, is a fine example of 
childish and hearty German fantasy. 

Even to Cranach one can only be just in the presence 
of his "intimate" paintings. The other works, which 
during his lifetime brought him fame and reputation, 
have now but little to say to us. However often he 
painted the spiritual heroes of the sixteenth century 
his portraits of Luther reveal nothing of the warm- 
hearted temperament of the reformer, as little as those 
of Melanchthon disclose the thoughtful delicacy of the 
scholar. They are simply great men seen through the 
temperament of a philistine. The dogmatising altar- 
pieces which serve as professions of his Protestant 
faith have only a didactic, even schoolmasterly effect; 
they are learned treatises, as different from former 
pictures as an intelligible and naturalistic Protestant 
sermon differs from the poetic lyricism of the Gospels; 
as a whitewashed Protestant church from a mighty 
cathedral gleaming in the splendour of tapers and 
flooded with the notes of the organ. But he is most 
distressing of all whv^n attempting to play the academi- 
cian and to render life-sized figures: the greater the 


jf rancouia an& Bavada 301 

size, the more awful the void. There are half-length 
pictures of Judith with red Rembrandtesque hats, 
showing with droll smiles a sword and a pewter bowl 
containing a decapitated head; there are full-length 
women wearing heavy golden necklaces, who when 
escorted by a Cupid are called Venus, or when senti- 
mentally thrusting a dagger into their breasts are 
characterised as Lucretia. Everything is weak and 
schematic in drawing and affected in sentiment. 

But when upon the point of turning from Cranach 
as a dry pedant, an empty exaggerator or an aged 
talker, one suddenly discovers that the same man has 
painted pictures which, in their honest inwardness and 
simple thoughtfulness belong to the most delightful 
products of German life. Among these are the delicate 
yellow-haired Madonnas which fill one with such 
homelike pleasure in foreign collections — as when 
in the midst of fiery Romanic eyes the clear, faithful 
glance of a German eye meets us; or when in foreign 
climes the ear unexpectedly catches a simple German 
folk-song, sung with untrained voice but hearty 
feeling. Among these paintings, also, are his mis- 
chievous panels of the Fountain of Youth, in which 
old hags climbing into the water basin appear upon the 
other side as dainty maidens. Here also belong his 
pictures of Bathsheba, which are so Teutonic, and so 
simple and hearty in the manner in which the biblical 
bath scene with the lustful old men is transformed into 
an innocent foot-bath. A piece of Germany as our 


302 ©ermanic painttn^ 

grandfathers knew it lives in these ancient village 
humours, — as when on a sunny Sunday morning they 
wandered through the flowering gardens and uneven 
lanes of an old German town, where fair maidens, look- 
ing down from oriel windows, sleepily combed their hair. 
Is there anything more dainty than Cranach's fresh pic- 
tures of antique life, in which, however, the nymphs of 
German romance and the wild men of our woodland tales 
move and live ? Far from the philosophic brooding 
of Dijrer transposing the profound thoughts of a Faust 
into the antique world, or from the cold, clear correctness 
which at a later day prevailed, Cranach treats antique 
legends like romantic stories of the age of chivalry, 
with the same childishness that charms us in Thoma. 
Unspeakably comic is the gentleman with broad, 
well-kept beard of the formal cut of a Saxon elector, 
who at one time appears as a satyr, at another as 
Paris or Apollo. And the little maidens with the slight 
budlike forms, and delicate but firm limbs, and with 
the golden chains and red hats, associated in such an 
innocent manner with Eve's costume, are surely 
charming. Whether they appear as coy forest queens 
daintily sitting on a stag's back, as nymphs reposing 
beside a rippling brook, or as Venus, Minerva or Juno 
in company with the gentleman of the Saxon beard 
aforesaid — ^we have the German sentiment of story un- 
disturbed by a single academic trait. 

It is the spicy woodland landscape that gives to these 
paintings their indescribable charm. Works like the 


jfranconla anb 3Bavaria 303 

Flight into Egypt have an odour of pine forest and a 
Christmas poetry which even Altdorfer did not attain. 
While the latter depicted the German forest, Cranach 
discovered the soul of the forest — the fairy story. 
Sometimes it even seems as if the toadstool was about 
to change into a gnome, the knotted branches of a tree 
into old Riibezahl,^ or the clouds into elves. For all 
these beings are not placed arbitrarily in nature. 
As the insect procures its whole existence, and even 
acquires its form and colour, from the plant upon which 
it lives, so Cranach's beings, enchanted by the magic 
of the wood, seem an integral part of the thicket. 
Gnarled stumps, misshapen as the alum root, arise; 
thick creepers, knotted roots, moss and ferns spread out ; 
and in the midst of this woodland nature, in its rugged 
castles, dwell the inhabitants of the wood. Their cal- 
loused fingers are knotted branches, their wrinkled skin 
is the burst bark of a tree, their beards resemble that 
cHnging moss which in the autumn hangs upon old trees. 
The denizens of the forest, stags, roes, squirrels, and 
wildcats, are their comrades. It was a fatality for 
Cranach that in the learned and courtly surroundings 
of Wittenberg he was so often compelled to labour 
against the trend of his talents. In these simple 
pictures of fable he is the most German of Germans. 
One loves to think of him sitting in his drug shop beside 
the heavy pigskin folios, brewing the herbs of the 
German forest into wonderful elixirs. There is a 

' A mountain demon of the Riesengebirge. — Ed, 


VOL. I. — 20 


304 Oermanic painting 

certain relation between his art and the pharmacy; 
for he and Spitzwerg, the two apothecaries in the 
history of art, are also most closely related as artists. 

IDH. Blsace auD Suabia 

Matthias Grlinewald, whose Conversion of Mauritius 
hangs beside Cranach's Lucreiia in Munich, again 
leads us to the southern soil. Not untruly does 
Sandrart, the acute connoisseur, call him the German 
Correggio. In sentiment, indeed, he has little in com- 
mon with the painter of Parma; his cruel naturalism, 
his delight in suffering and daemonic fantasy found a 
counterpart neither in Correggio nor in any other 
Italian master; but in a colouristic sense the character- 
isation is accurate. For Grunewald's relation to the 
school of Dijrer resembles Correggio's to the school of 
Rome. In the circumstance that neither prints from 
wood-cuts nor from line engravings by him exist, the 
difference is expressed. While other German artists pre- 
ferred the burin to the brush and gave their paintings the 
character of large coloured prints, Grunewald thought 
in a pictorial manner, and felt his power only in uniting 
bright, glowing colours in powerful harmonies. In 
his paintings there are no sharp outlines or arch- 
itectonic composition, but dissolving masses of colour 
and a magic chiaroscuro enveloping the scene with a 
subtle charm. In pathos also he is characteristically 
German, far deeper than the Romanic artists, although 


BIsace an^ Suabla 305 

certain shades of his sentiment remind one of Correggio. 
A certain dreamy, sensuous tendency lends to his 
Madonna at Colmar an almost North Italian character. 
When Sandrarti characterised him as the German 
Correggio, he had, without knowing it, correctly 
determine d the artistic origin of Grunewald. Correggio 
and Grunewald have sprung from the same source: 
their spiritual father is Leonardo, While it is not 
certain that Grunewald visited Italy, it must be re- 
membered that even to-day many a journey made by 
a young artist is not immediately recorded by a re- 
porter. In all of his pictures Grunewald used a kind 
of heraldic, late Gothic decoration — never antique 
ornaments, columns or pillars as he would have done 
had he seen the South. He was perhaps attracted by 
something else besides the architecture of Italy. We 
know that when Durer went to Venice he was most 
interested in the problems of line, eurythmy and 
the nude. Although Grunewald was also impressed 
as his picture of St Mauritius at Munich shows, by 
the monumental simplicity of Italian art, the mighty 
pose of its figures, and the nobility of its draperies, he 
was even more attracted by the wonderful world of 
colour and of sentiment which Leonardo had revealed. 
The effects of light in his paint are Leonardesque, 

1 Joachim von Sandrart ( 1 606-88), himself a painter and engraver, 
is the Vasari of German art. The seventh volume of his monumental 
work upon the fine arts, Teutsche Academic der Ban-, Bildhauer- 
und Malerkunst (2 vols., Nuremberg, 1675-79), revised by Volkmann 
(8 vols., lb., 1768-75), contains the lives of the painters. — Ed.,^ 


3o6 6ermanic painting 

as is also the smile that plays about Mary's lips 
and the soft wavy hair encircling her countenance. The 
Madonna in the Grotto is the elder sister of the same 
subject at Colmar. Even the landscapes are different 
from what Germany offers; he does not, like Altdorfer 
and Cranach, paint the young green foliage of German 
woods, but a sensuous, sappy nature, recalling the 
Riviera. All the plants are luxuriant and rich in col- 
our, almost seeming to smother in their overpowering 
fulness of life. Every tree makes the impression of 
rapid tropical growth. Sappy parasites wind from 
stem to stem; garlands and creepers climb luxuriantly 
through the branches; and glowing red roses gleam 
from the dark foliage. It is curious to hear that even 
the donor of Grlinewald's principal work was an Italian, 
the preceptor Guido Guersi; but even stranger to 
observe that many of his Leonardesque qualities are 
found in the works of an older artist of Mayence, the 
Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet. 

In its pictorial and spiritual quahties, Grunewald's 
masterpiece, the celebrated Isenheim altar-piece, now 
in the Museum of Colmar, is the most astonishing 
work produced by German art during the fifteenth 
century. Although he does not stand in such close 
relation to nature as Cranach and Altdorfer, and al- 
though it is useless to seek for German soulfulness in 
his works, he has nevertheless run through the whole 
scale of human emotion: from transfigured sensuality 
to cruel tragedy, and from joyful ecstasy to ghostly 


Blsace an& Suabia 307 

" Satanism." An entire witches' Sabbath is let loose 
in his painting representing the Temptation of St. 
Antony. From the ravines and the fissure in the 
rock hideous monsters crawl forth, not the tame Httle 
devils of Schongauer, but wild demonic creatures. 
Then there is a change of scene; heaven opens, angels 
descend, and a golden temple of luxuriant parasites, 
grape vines, and flowers arises, as if by magic, from 
the landscape. Cherubim descend, making music and 
singing in stormy devotion to Mary. In the other 
wings of the altar, a wild cry of pain strikes us. The 
sufferings of Christ are over; the arms of the cross 
bend under the burden of his lifeless body. The 
wounds made by the scourge still bleed; the fingers are 
cramped, the toes stretched, and the feet swollen; 
the head, like that of a man who had been hanged, 
sinks heavily to one side. Magdalen cries aloud, and 
Mary sinks to the earth in deathlike rigidity The 
Resurrection is Granewald's greatest work as a painter 
of light. The starry heaven is opened and the clouds 
are torn apart; but while the earth remains in darkness, 
fluttering cloud-like light floods the Saviour, whose 
figure has no corporeal but a ghostly effect; it seems an 
apparition of light which has suddenly taken shape, 
only to dissolve again into vapour. This is more than a 
colouristic achievement; it is a new way of thinking. 
The linear style of older artists is replaced by a purely 
pictorial style, centring around the treatment of 
light and shade. A curious perspective in the history 


3o8 Germanic painting 

of art is here revealed. Sandrart writes that the 
painter PhiHpp UfTenbach, a pupil of GrQnewald's 
pupil Hans Grimmer, had often told him at Frankfort 
of the strange master who "led such a melancholy 
life" at Mayence. This Uffenbach was the master 
of Adam Elsheimer, who inspired Pieter Lastmann, 
who was in turn the teacher of Rembrandt; and thus 
the two greatest fantastic painters of the North clasp 
hands over the centuries. 

An immediate influence upon German art was not 
exercised by Grunewald. For it would hardly har- 
monise with the style of Hans Baldung to call him a 
successor of this master. It is true that upon making 
the acquaintance of the Isenheim altar in 1 5 1 2 he adopt- 
ed its creator's tendency towards dreamy and colour- 
istic effects. If nothing were known of Grunewald, 
the altar of the Freiburg minster might be celebrated 
as the greatest sixteenth-century German achievement 
in colour. The beaming light, the tropical landscape 
with the luxuriant palms in whose foliage angels are 
swinging, resemble those in GrQnewald's works. But 
for lack of the instinct of a creative spirit, the colour 
is subordinated to rigid line. 

Of his later panels, painted at Strassburg, the al- 
legories and his representation of Death stand nearest 
to the sentiment of our own day. Baldung here 
shows a fine eye for the sensuous charm of the female 
nude. Women, music, and cats are curiously juxta- 
posed in the example at Nuremberg. Strange also is 


HIsace ant) Siiabfa 309 

the daemonic trend of many of his works. One thinks 
of Stack's Sin before the woman full of passionate 
desire at whose feet the serpent crawls, or of Rops, 
before the allegories of the Basel Museum, in which 
death, like a were-wolf, seizes youthful women, pressing 
his fleshless teeth in elfme, vampire-like passion upon 
their rosy lips. 

As Leonardo was for Grunewald, so Giovanni 
Bellini was a mentor for the Suabian masters. They 
are equally unacquainted with thoughtful fantasy, 
German inwardness, or wild passion; but insinuating, 
charming, and pleasing in their gentle sentiment, 
graceful flow of line, and harmonious colour. The 
treasures of the Italian Renaissance had been revealed 
to them earlier than to the Prankish and Bavarian 
masters, and they dallied with these ornaments as 
the Italians had centuries before with the antique. 
One sees splendid halls with painted ceilings resting 
upon Corinthian columns, mighty niches in churches 
with open aisles. Renaissance fountains and gilded 
thrones, in the midst of which, as in the Venetian 
paintings, gentle and quiet events occur. 

In Ulm Martin Schaffner was the first to follow this 
path. Instead of the unctuous pulpit tone sounded by 
Zeitblom, his elder countryman, he indulges in worldly 
causerie. There is nothing angular or rugged in his 
works, but all is of flowing elegance. In his principal 
painting, the organ-doors of the imperial foundation 
of Wettenhausen, now in Munich, rich Gothic foliage 


310 Germanic ipaintin^ 

is combined with cupids, dolphins, and other joyful 
decorative elements of the Renaissance. Gay columns 
of marble with golden capitals arise; and the draperies 
fall with an easy elegance. His Death of Mary does not 
occur in her bed, as in older German paintings, but in 
the solemn nave of a church where, surrounded by 
apostles, she sinks to earth. For Schaffner had already 
been influenced by the representative spirit of the 
cinquecento, which considered the homelike and genre 
accessories of the older art ordinary. 

Augsburg, in which, unlike Nuremberg, the life of a 
great city pulsated, was the little Paris of those days. 
Even to-day, notwithstanding the levelling influence of 
time, the two cities preserve this contrast: in Nurem- 
berg Gothic churches, oddly decorated tabernacles, 
and angular narrowness; in Augsburg broad streets, 
mighty Renaissance palaces, and fountains with 
statues. The fountain of Augusta, a proud embodiment 
of the Roman origin of Augusta Vindelicorum, is the 
characteristic feature of Augsburg. Not only by 
reason of its pride as a Roman colony, but also through 
its commercial relation with Venice, it was destined 
to be an Italian enclave on German soil. The high- 
school of Augsburg merchants was Venice, where in 
the Fondaco dei Tedeschi its merchant princes like 
the Fuggers obtained their education. 

Its painters, therefore, were the Venetians of the 
North. Ulrich Apt alone, in his Crucifixion at Augs- 
burg, the altar-piece of the Munich University Chapel, 


Blsace anC) Suabia 3" 

and the Bewailing of the Body of Christ, creates a 
northern and Netherlandish impression. The pictures 
of the others all point to the South. Although Hans 
Burgkmair belonged to the school of Schongauer, his 
connection with Venice is proved by the fact that 
Caspar Straffo, a Venetian, was apprenticed to him 
in 1 501, and that the background of his chiaroscuro 
print Death the Executioner exhibits a canal scene 
with gondolas. It would be vain to search for delicacy 
of feeling in his works. Even in treating such subjects 
as the Passion or the Apocalypse in his wood-cuts, he 
achieved only a decorative effect, and confined himself 
to placing ideas borrowed from others in pleasing 
surroundings. But the prints designed for the Weiss- 
kunig,di\\iQ of the Emperor Maximilian, are graceful and 
elegant, and moreover valuable sources of information 
upon costumes and arms. The same sense of harmony 
in form and colour also characterises his paintings. 
Quite Venetian is the mighty, gloomy effect of the 
Renaissance architecture surrounding the figures, and 
the manner in which he places the throne of Mary 
in the midst of the landscape. The heads of his 
Madonnas, with the regular oval and loose plaits of hair 
framing the features, bear the impress of the South. 
By a capriciously distorted position of the mouth he 
sought to impart a Bellinesque touch and something 
of the dreamy melancholy of upper Italy to his works. 
Even his feeling for landscape is Venetian; for he 
painted only southern nature— golden oranges gleaming 


312 Germanic ipaintina 

in the dark foliage — never the German; nor did he 
attempt to render detail in sharp outline, but rather 
to attain misty light effects in which the outlines are 
dissolved in the decorative masses. 

Gumpolt Giltlinger, a rather clumsier artist, offers 
in his Adoration of ihe Kings further variations of the 
same style, and Christopher Amberger is altogether 
a Venetian. His music-making angels, the soft, full 
figures of his women with their golden hair, the pompous 
columnar architecture and the glowing colour — all 
these things impress one as if the altar-pieces had been 
painted not on the banks of the Lech but on the 
Lagoons. His best portraits are in the Berlin Gallery: 
those of Charles V. and Sebastian Munster, which 
unite with the acute observation of nature, character- 
istic of the German, Venetian nobility of character and 
harmony of colour. By similar works the last great 
Augsburg artist, Hans Holbein the younger, achieved 
his world-wide reputation. 

DflH. Dolbein 

Since Diirer and Holbein are honoured as the greatest 
German artists of the sixteenth century, the in- 
clination to place them in antithesis arises; not in 
order to decide, in accordance with the well-known 
scheme, which of the two was the greater, but be- 
cause comparisons afford very valuable means of 
characterisation. 


Ibolbein 313 

One is first struck by the change which had taken 
place in art since the appearance of Daren As a 
pupil of Wohlgemuth, the latter began with angular 
Gothic forms, and laboriously achieved harmony and 
simplicity; while Holbein stood from the beginning 
upon the soil of the Renaissance, which he had learned 
from his father. Besides the differences in time, there 
was a striking difference in their surroundings; in the 
one case the uneven, angular Nuremberg, in the 
other the urban and elegant Augsburg, which also im- 
parted to its artists an urbane and polished character. 
Finally they were radically different in character. 
Although both were Germans they were nevertheless 
antipodes. While Dijrer was at bottom a scholar and 
closed his activity with theoretical and scientific 
works, Holbein was quite indifferent to the theory of 
art, and, indeed, perhaps never took a pen in hand to 
write. As soon as he had left Nuremberg Durer at 
once kept a diary, or at least wrote long letters to 
his friends; but no letters of Holbein to his friends or 
family survive, notwithstanding his long residence 
abroad. This is indicative not merely of laziness in 
writing but of lack of feeling. Standing before the 
celebrated portrait in Basel with which he said farewell 
to his family in 1 529, one receives a similar impression. 
His wife sitting there is the same being to whom he had 
sworn faith ten years before, except that she has grown 
older and now seems a burden to him. The handsome 
fellow of thirty-five, who wishes to conquer the world 


314 Germanic paintina 

for himself, could no longer use this matron who seemed 
to him so provincial and countrified. 

" Was schert mich Weib, was schert mich Kind, 
Ich trage weit besseres Verlangen. 
Lass sie betteln gehen, wenn sie hungrig sind; " 

this was probably his only sentiment for his family. 

Durer would never have deserted his wife, whom he 
took with him even upon his journey to the Netherlands ; 
and he was bound by the same tenderness to his native 
town. However much he rejoiced to receive a visit 
from Bellini at Venice, or when at Antwerp the artists 
instituted a torch-light procession in his honour, 
nothing could have moved him to leave Nuremberg. 
Holbein, on the other hand, was more suited in his 
unpatriotic cosmopolitanism to the international 
world of learning at Basel. Among these humanists 
he found his especial affmity in Erasmus. Could 
Durer be summoned from the grave and asked whom 
among his contemporaries he honoured most, he would 
have answered, Luther. He feared for him with con- 
stant solicitude, and read his writings with throbbing 
heart. Holbein's life was influenced only by the 
Voltaire of the sixteenth century, the sceptical and 
ironical Erasmus. 

It would not be wrong to call Durer the Luther and 
Holbein the Erasmus of German art; for the latter's 
portrait of himself has the same mocking and critical 
expression. In his portrait at Munich Darer appears 
as a visionary, staring rigidly into another world, like an 


HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER 



PORTRAIT OF GEORG GISSE 

Berlin Gallery 


Ibolbefn 31s 

apparition of Christ among mankind. As sacramental 
and solemn as is Durer's portrait, so profane and 
worldly is that of Holbein. His clear, light blue eyes 
gaze not into the other world, but sharply and keenly 
into this one. There is also something cold and 
merciless in this face of the man who, when his father 
ended in misery and his brother was overwhelmed 
by life, was as cold and indifferent toward them as 
others had been to him. 

A document of 15 17, summoning him to appear 
before court in order to answer for a nocturnal brawl 
with goldsmiths' apprentices, illumines another side 
of his nature. From it one can see that he also re- 
sembled those Swiss artists who were known as such 
wild fellows. Urs Graf especially, a rude and ad- 
venturous companion, was a true type of the time. 
He marched through the country with market-women ; 
served as a lansquenet in the murderous battle of 
Marignano; was warned in court to cease the licentious 
life which he had openly and shamelessly led with 
strumpets, and had to promise that he would hence- 
forth neither jostle, pinch nor beat his lawful spouse. 
Holbein also was something of a lansquenet. It is 
no accident that he was so fond of drawing quarrelsome 
peasants and lansquenets; that he painted the first 
courtesan picture in German art, that of Dorothea 
Offenburg; and that in his London will he made 
no provision for his family at Basel, but only for his 
illegitimate children. 


3i6 (Bermanlc ipaintirtG 

With this analysis of his nature, that of his art is 
also given. Durer, the thinker, expresses as an artist 
also the power of his personality in thoughts. His 
art is poetic and story-telling, and his principal char- 
acteristic is a brooding element, a reflective absorption 
in mysterious, allegorical ideas. Holbein never offers 
us such heavy nourishment. Not only is the allegorical 
and thoughtful absent; he is also a stranger to the 
hearty and confidential element of DUrer's work. 
In examining the latter's St. Jerome one imagines that 
it is the artist himself, sitting in his quiet retreat near 
the Tiergiirtner gate, labouring at his engravings and 
rejoicing in the sunshine that plays so cosily upon 
the floor and chests. Turning through the leaves 
of his Life of Mary the student is charmed with the 
deep love of family pervading the works of this man, 
who was never blessed with children. In his landscapes 
he himself lives, as fresh, pious, joyful, and free as they 
are, and with the wanderer's staff in this hand he 
marches over hill and dale. There is nothing of 
all this in the works of Holbein. Homeless himself, 
he was lacking in the German love of home. Although 
he had children, he only knew the child as an Italian 
piitto. When he paints landscapes at all they are so 
much like applied art that one could more readily 
conceive them as chased in silver than as existing in 
reality. Mysterious nooks and cosy corners, inviting 
the beholder to reflect and dream, do no exist in his 
works. 


Ibolbetn 317 

As Durer began with his Apocalypse, so did Holbein 
with book-titles; but while even in such work the 
former remained a deep thinker — as, for example, 
in his Knots — everything in Holbein's works is char- 
acterised by a clear and flowing elegance. Besides 
the ornamentation of books, he also designed for 
applied art; and while Durer's decorative designs 
were dramas unsuitable for the stage (because in 
these things, too, he placed so much thought that 
no artisan could carry them out), Holbein's, although 
everything in them is strange, whimsical, and joyous, 
were at the same time of a simplicity which admitted 
of practical execution. He knew exactly how much 
he could expect of the artisan and of the material. 

Passing from the ornamental to his designs of 
figures, let us first examine those for stained glasses. 
Saints, Madonnas and angels alternate with sturdy 
lansquenets in gay and picturesque costume; not to 
forget those designs of feminine costume, which were 
resurrected thirty years ago by Makart and Fritz 
August Kaulbach. Finally, he also appears as a 
singer of the Messiad, in which work his difference 
from Darer is clearly shown. While the latter com- 
posed thoughtful religious epics and preached the 
life of the Redeemer to the people, Holbein only 
gives designs for stained glasses; quite unconcerned 
as to the emotional content of the subject, and only 
inquiring how the silhouette of the figures would 
harmonise with their decorative surroundings. The 


3i8 (Bermantc jpaintiriG 

same is true of his wood-cuts, which belong to the 
same circle of ideas. Durer never illustrated, but 
incorporated his own thoughts, bringing before the 
eye only that which moved his innermost being. 
Holbein's illustration of the Bible would hardly have 
appeared had not Luther completed his translation 
just at that time. In his illustration of the Apocalypse 
he shapes even those things which for Diirer contained 
the deepest riddles of the spirit into clear and elegant 
forms. With the same impartiality shown in his 
designs for Luther's Bible, he illustrated the Vulgate 
also. The Old Testament, with which he was con- 
nected by no ties of heart, permitted him to appear 
even more as a profane narrator. Even in his Dance 
of Death he is a jolly comrade whom neither the devil 
nor hell inspires with terror. The night of insanity 
broods over Rethel's version, and that of Klinger is 
thoughtful and daemonic. Death, as Holbein con- 
ceived him, is not the great world-dominating power, 
but a wild soldier, who, like Urs Graf, takes pleasure 
in jostling, poking, and beating civilians. 

Even with the brush in hand, he remains the same 
able workman. The entire manual dexterity of the 
old German stone-masons seems revived in him. 
He mounted scaffolds to decorate fa(;ades like those 
still popular in southern Germany and Tyrol. In 
his mural paintings of the council-chamber at Basel 
he obtained a monumental effect by a simple de- 
corative style. Even in his panels he never became 


Ibolbein 319 

a dreamer, but rather reminds us of the dual activity of 
Menzel. Examining the ornamental illustrations of 
Menzel for the works of Frederick the Great, one is as- 
tonished to see with what facility the same man, other- 
wise known as a realistic painter, was also a master of 
clever improvisation. So Holbein, the facile decora- 
tor and improviser, is in his oil paintings essentially 
realistic; he never applies the brush without consulting 
his model, knowing no fantasy, and trusts only his 
clear and sure eye. 

His first masterpiece, the Christ of the Basel Museum, 
only bears this title pro forma. It is in truth a powerful 
realistic representation, before which in our own day 
Leon Bonnat and Wilhelm Trubner stood in thoughtful 
meditation before they themselves painted the subjects 
which aroused the horror of visitors to universal 
expositions. In other works Holbein places the chief 
emphasis upon costume; he introduces as saints the 
beautiful women, much decollete'es and in rich costumes, 
who at a later period aroused the same indignation 
among Protestant reformers as had Ghirlandajo's 
figures with Savonarola. In the Madonna at Solothurn 
he has portrayed his wife Elsbeth Schmidt, at that 
time a young woman, and his oldest child. As in 
the northern Italian works, a knight and a monk stand 
at her side as guard of honour. The same noble 
simplicity was not possible in the Madonna of Burgo- 
master Meyer, the original of which is at Darmstadt. 
Here the problem was to unite a whole family — the 

VOL. I. — 21 


320 OermatUc patntina 

father, his two wives, and three children — about Mary 
in a picture which should serve as an epitaph. It 
afforded, however, all the greater opportunity to a 
portrait painter; for it would be out of place to speak 
of religious feeling or to search for heavenly longing 
and lyric softness in this picture. On the contrary, 
just this Madonna shows wherein the gifts of the master 
lay; for Holbein's distinction lies in his portraits. 

Even in portraiture he cannot dispense with the 
coldness which is his prevailing characteristic. Such 
a clear and sober man was incapable of sentimental 
fits. When Holbein, unknown and searching for for- 
tune, came to England, he was taken up by Sir Thomas 
More, the royal chancellor. For a year he lived in 
More's house, and through him he was introduced 
into learned and court circles. Yet in the following 
year he served the same Henry who had condemned 
his first patron to the scaffold. He witnessed the 
executions caused by Henry, and lived through a 
dance of death far more awful than the one he had 
designed. The proudest and most touching figures 
upon the stage of Henry Vlll.'s reign stand before 
us in his portraits: statesmen, princes of the church, 
noblemen, and beautiful women, over whom even while 
he painted them the Damocles sword of destiny hung. 
His portraits betray nothing of this tragedy; even the 
temperament and disposition of his models is a matter 
of indifference to him. A stranger living among 
strangers he only felt himself a camera ohscura. Trav- 


HANS HOLBEIX THE YOUNGER 



ARCHBISHOP WARHAM OF CANTERBUBY 

Louvre 


Ibolbein 321 

elling in the service of the King to Brussels and later 
to Cleves, he painted the proposed queens Christina 
of Denmark and Anne of Cleves with the same ob- 
jectivity with which he also painted Jane Seymour. 
One might almost say that Holbein himself had some- 
thing of Henry VI II. about him. One can hardly 
conceive of other German artists, like Durer and 
Grunewald, living in England. What could such 
fantasts have done in the midst of these practical, 
positive people, with their sensible matter-of-fact 
disposition and their sanguine egotism which knew no 
ideals? Holbein suited England; when he became 
court painter to Henry V H 1 . two congenial spirits found 
each other. There was a secret bond between them, 
the same pitiless coldness. Even his colour appears 
to supplement this cold sensibility; for although 
Holbein occasionally used warm colour, cold harmonies 
are far more characteristic of his work. Blue and 
black, green and grey especially appear in cool and 
silvery harmonies, as distinguished as they are icy. 
In this unparalleled objectivity lies also his greatness. 
Consider the portrait painters of all centuries; each one 
is more or less one-sided, succeeding with certain heads, 
but utterly hopeless when attempting to depict others. 
Jan van Eyck rejoices in pronounced ugliness, in fan- 
tastic noses, wrinkled hands, and furrowed coun- 
tenances. Diirer, the master of the Four Aposiles, 
succeeds as a portraitist only in interpreting the heads 
of thinkers; while van Dyck, Holbein's successor in 


322 Germanic Hbaintincj 

England, is powerless to portray rugged, manly 
characters, and feels himself at home only with gracious 
womanhood and dandified nobility. I n contrast to this, 
Holbein reflects nature with an absolute objectivity, 
and is equally great in portraying the business-like 
expression of a Giese or the puflfed-up brutality of 
King Henry; a weather-browned, swearing sea-bear, 
or the distinguished ambassador Moret; the refined 
grace of Christina of Denmark, or the homely pro- 
vincialism of Anne of Clcves. Considering the paths 
afterwards traversed by court painting, one must 
admire not only the versatility but also the sentiment 
of the master. There is something imposing in this 
rugged plebeian pride which, even before the king's 
throne, never learned how to flatter. 

Even more than Holbein's pictures one admires his 
drawings. For the modern eye is accustomed to value 
artistic mastery most when it is expressed with boldest 
directness. A sketch preserving the original thought, 
the very handwriting of the master, is dearer to us 
than the completed painting no longer revealing the 
process of creation. Holbein's drawings, and es- 
pecially the sketches in Windsor Castle, therefore con- 
tain, according to the present taste, the quintessence 
of his art. He was the first to form for himself what 
may be called a stenographic style, which in its grand- 
iose simplicity has no equal in the art of the sixteenth 
century. The simpler the means, the more astonishing 
the effect. A skilful line of the pencil suffices to fix 


llDolbeiu 323 

a character or to create the impression of the corporeal. 
Had he created nothing else than these rapid and 
accurate drawings, they alone would suffice to insure 
him a place among the first draughtsmen in the history 
of art. 

When he died at London in 1543 German art was 
buried with him. That he was compelled to leave 
home and seek sustenance in a foreign land, already 
presaged the end of German artistic life. For in the 
religious and political struggles of the day art was 
necessarily silenced. Such works as still came into 
being were created by foreigners; and instead of 
German art there existed only Italian art upon German 
soil. 


I 


Chapter IIID 

Zbc XIriuinpb of tbe Sensual in ITtal^ 
H. Gbe Ifnfluencc of XconarOo 

F one wished to denominate the change which 
ItaHan art experienced at the beginning of the 
sixteenth century with a single characteristic 
expression, he might call it the reaction against Savo- 
narola. A spiritual period was followed by one of 
sensuality, and the mortification of the senses by their 
triumph. When Botticelli painted, Savonarola's elo- 
quence had changed all Italy into a house of God. 
The people streamed together to hear from him the 
gospel of renunciation and of the joys of paradise. 
The Banishment of the Vices, at that time so often 
painted, is no eternal allegory, but homage to Savo- 
narola, who drove the vices out of Italy. 

But when the executioner's pyre of the Piazza della 
Signoria had consumed the troublesome disturber 
of peace, what he had outlawed, sensuality and the 
joy of living, arose phcenix-like from the ashes. It is 
true that at this time religious notes were also sounded. 
Luther had nailed his theses to the church door at 
Wittenberg, and an echo of these blows vibrated 

324 


ITnfluence ot Xeonar^o 325 

through Italy. But it was only a soft echo which was 
soon silent. Italy did not need to be excited over 
what took place in foreign countries. The generation 
which listened to Savonarola was followed by a new 
worldly race which wished to enjoy to the full the 
pleasures which life offered. The earth itself had 
become a paradise, and the most beautiful thing in this 
paradise was the fall of man. If, as was related, a 
cardinal at the court of Leo X. had his bathroom 
decorated with love-myths of the ancient gods; if 
another declared that to the perfection of the papal 
court only women were lacking; if, as is reported, one 
of the following popes upon his death-bed answered 
with a painful smile to the priest who was painting 
the joys of the other world, "This pleasure will be all 
the greater the longer it is deferred" — all such incidents 
illumine, in a striking manner, the spirit of the time. 
And what happened at Rome, the city of St. Peter, 
is more comprehensible elsewhere. There were eleven 
thousand courtesans in Venice, and at Parma there is 
said to have been a nunnery where the experiences 
related in Boccaccio's Decamerone could have been 
duplicated. A paganism rejoicing in the senses, such 
as had existed at Athens and Alexandria, had once 
more come over the world. Art is the chronicle of its 
age, and if a title were sought for the epoch following 
Savonarola, it could only be found in one like the 
following: art under the influence of sensuality. Glanc- 
ing backward into the past, it is not difficult to recognise 


326 Urlumpb of tbe Sensual 

in Leonardo the man who began this new era. For 
however much he may have resembled BotticeUi, 
Belhni, and Perugino in spirituaUty, the soul which 
he gave to his women is a different one. For these 
artists, however different they were, the Christian 
gospel of the renunciation of earthly things was 
J determinative. The eyes of their chaste and pale 
women do not long for earthly joys, but gaze, fore- 
boding future suffering, with melancholy piety into 
the infinite. In this resignation and perfect renuncia- 
tion of all earthly joys, they embody the ethical 
content, the innermost spirit of Christianity, Leo- 
nardo's works contain no such religious sentiment. 
One is no longer reminded of a great cathedral where 
the quivering incense ascends to heaven: the odeur 
de femme has replaced the incense. The senses of these 
women have been awakened, and they no longer 
practise self-denial. Like a suppressed, erotic earth- 
quake is the quiver about their mouth, and the moist 
shimmer which the Greeks gave to the love-goddess 
glistens in their eye. While Botticelli painted his 
Venus as chaste as Mary, in Leonardo's hands Mary 
became a goddess of love. 

The body also asserted its rights against the soul. 
Those earlier artists thought with Millet: When I 
paint a mother, she should only be beautiful through 
4 the glance with which she beams upon her child. The 
earthly grace of Leonardo is not confined to the head; 
the love charm is indissolubly united with the body; 


Ifntluence ot XeonarC)o 327 

and for this reason thin gauze draperies cling to the 
voluptuous forms. In his search for sensual beauty, 
he commingles the charms of both sexes. 

In subject also he stands in contrast to the artists of 
the age of Savonarola. They painted the Crucifixion, 
the Entombment, and the Bewailing of the Body of 
Christ in a manner as gloomily pathetic as the thunder 
tones of the prophet himself. From Leonardo da 
Vinci, the steel-armoured youth who paces so serenely 
in Verrocchio's Tobias, all the waves of the religious 
movement rebounded. There is nothing sad in his 
works. Even his Last Supper is not the representation 
of the sad hour of parting, but a masterly dramatisation 
of a great psychological event. In the picture at Berlin 
he did not choose the moment of the Crucifixion or 
of the Entombment, but of the Resurrection. Christ 
is represented not as suffering, but as the victor over 
life and death. It is not his friends who bewail 
the martyred one, but two saints ecstatically glance 
up to the radiant Son of God. Indeed, he goes even 
further. As he knew no suffering, he knew no age and 
no decay. He avoided every theme which rendered 
it necessary to introduce Mary as an aged matron, as 
Bellini and Botticelli had done in their representation 
of the Pietd. In order to avoid painting folds and 
wrinkles, he went so far as to represent St. Anne in the 
same radiant youthful beauty as her daughter Mary. 

How greatly he -touched the heart of his time in this 
respect is shown by the literary products of the epoch. 


328 ITriumpb ot tbc Sen£?ual 

The same significance that the treatises on perspective 
and anatomy had for the fifteenth century belongs 
to those upon the beauty of women in the sixteenth — 
such as the Venetian Luigini's Libra delle belle donne 
or the Discorso della belle {(a by the Florentine Firen- 
zuola. The same spirit of erotic sensuality and 
Olympian serenity henceforth prevails in art. The 
whole emotional content of the age is expressed in that 
Leonardesque smile. I n the Crucifixion every expression 
of pain is softened, and the harsh severity of the theme 
is deprived of its realistic truth by delicate treatment. 
In martyrdoms not the physical pain and suffering, but 
ecstatic foreboding of heavenly joys is depicted. 
They no longer love to linger with sad things, but tim- 
idly avoid all that can cause pain. Christ's heart 
bleeding and full of wounds, and his passion, about 
which the representations of the German masters 
centred, no longer exist for the Italians. It is dis- 
tasteful to this age which takes so much joy in the 
J senses to see God suffer, die, and offer himself as a 
sacrifice. Mary, too, is neither the pale maiden nor the 
careworn mother, but an elegant lady of fashion who, 
even in her later years, preserved the charm of a young 
widow. The saints who serve her as guard of honour 
no longer resemble the ecstatic children of the desert 
and the weather-beaten grey-beards of former days; 
they are now joyful individuals for whom heaven 
signifies a court of love, and gallant young gentlemen 
bowing delicately before an adored lady. Indeed, 


Iliifluencc ot Xeouar^o 329 

they even receive a touch of feminine beauty. John 
the Baptist is transformed from the aged man in 
haircloth into a nude curly-haired youth with ecstatic 
glance; Magdalen, the penitent, becomes a fair sinner, 
and Golgotha has been transformed into a Christian 
Olympus, where there is neither struggle nor tragic 
pain, but pure unsullied happiness. 

Thence to the actual Olympus was not a long 
journey. After Leonardo had opened the way with 
his Leda, all the antique subjects outlawed by Savona- 
rola found their way back into art. As in Leonardo's 
painting, the pale Crucified One of Golgotha soared 
to heaven, and the joyful swarms of the gods of Greece 
took possession of the earth. The Hill of Venus 
which Botticelli, the penitent sinner, had deserted, 
now became the shrine to which the painters made 
pilgrimages. They knew nothing of the solemn power 
of the under world; of the struggles of the demi-gods 
Jason and Perseus, Theseus and Meleager, or of the 
heroes of Roman history, Ovid alone is the breviary 
of the age. As they depicted even the religious figures 
deprived of clothing, so also they preferred mythological 
subjects, because the Hellenic was such a lightly clad 
and very decollete epocn. In abrupt contrast to the 
monkish art of the past, they celebrated the soft linear 
rhythm of the nude; they painted almost exclusively 
the voluptuous love-adventures of the ancient gods who 
transformed themselves to delude fair mortals; and 
used antique subjects only to whisper sensuous, melting 


330 Uriunipl) ot tbe Sensual 

words and tempting love-melodies. A kind of fifteenth 
century Rococo thus followed the impassioned Baroco 
of the age of Savonarola. 


H1i, XconarDo's jfollowers 

The painters who assembled about the great master 
in Milan have not as yet been adequately considered 
by modern scholarship, which has dismissed them as 
planets shining by reflected light from the sun of 
Leonardo; as imitators who change the hoarded 
treasure of the master into small coin. Leonardo, of 
course, forms the imposing background of the artistic 
life of Milan. We are reminded of an Alpine landscape, 
the highest summit of which is his mighty head, so 
like an ancient river-god's. At the foot of the colossus 
the others contend; not giants, but men. Each 
of them had his own personality, and increased by 
some feature the realm of beauty. It is not correct 
to say that they only imitated the female ideal of 
Leonardo; every one had his own, differing in delicate 
shades from that of the master: the same melody, 
perhaps, but in a different key. 

In the portrait of the Emperor Maximilian, Ambro- 
gio de Predis still appears quite a quattrocentist. In 
the portrait of the Ambrosiana formerly supposed to 
be Bianca Sforza, wife of Maximilian, the Leonardesque 
female type first appears. How deeply he absorbed 


AMBROGIO DA PREDIS 



BIANCA MARIA SFORZA 

Ambrosiana Collection, Milan 


5Leonar5o*s ^followers 331 

the spirit of the master is shown by the London copy 
of the Madonna Litta in the Hermitage at St. Peters- 
burg formerly also attributed to Leonardo. It is the 
representation of a distinguished lady taking pleasure, 
as they did in the age of Rousseau, in nursing 
her child. A sensual and piquant touch is here im- 
parted to the ancient motive of the Madonna. 

Andrea Solario, descended from an ancient family of 
painters, was compelled as a young man to leave 
Milan and received his first impressions in Venice. 
His youthful works, principally portraits and half- 
length figures of the Madonna, create the impression 
made by a pupil of Bellini. After his return to Milan 
he seems to have been influenced by Borgognone. 
Reminiscent of this phase of his style, which resembles 
that of the Empire, is the Repose on the Flight into 
Egypt of the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, the strange Madonna 
who reminds one of Queen Louise of Prussia. In 
the Madonna of the Louvre he has become a pupil 
of Leonardo, but a perfumed and over-refined one. 
His other painting in the Louvre, the delicate head of 
John, upon a silver platter, is an interesting example 
of how art, freeing herself from the church, is at this 
time used to make quite personal confessions. In 
his portrait of the Liechtenstein Gallery, Leonardo 
created the type of the daemonic woman; and 
Solario, developing the theme, celebrates love as the 
daemonic, enslaving power. For the refined head with 
the delicate features is probably his own portrait, 


^P ttriumpb of tbe Sensual 

and the entire painting is dedicated to the lady who 
played the role of Salome in his life. 

Two other pupils of Leonardo, Francesco Melzi and 
Antonio Boltraffio, occupy a peculiar position, even 
as men. Such a charm was exercised by Leonardo's 
personality upon his surroundings that young aristo- 
crats for whom it was not at all necessary devoted 
themselves to painting. With such dilettanti the 
problem is a peculiar one. Being less constrained and 
in a position to follow their taste more than a profes- 
sional could, perhaps also because of their aristocratic 
descent, they often created the most refined works. 

Although Boltraffio's female types are derived from 
Leonardo's, he marks a new step in the history of 
painting. In former pictures Mary was always the 
Virgin: at first the maiden who had renounced the 
world, and then a more sensual type, Boltraffio's 
Madonna in the National Gallery — a woman mighty 
in outline, with serious eyes quivering with suppressed 
melancholy, with deep black hair shimmering almost 
into blue framing her harsh, brown features — 
such a type has less in common with Leonardo than 
with Watts and Feuerbach. The Child comes from its 
mother's lap and returns into the lap of the earth: 
such perhaps was also the thought of Watts when he 
conceived the Angel of Death. A manly accent, a 
touch of solemn grandeur, distinguishes Boltraffio from 
the others. Solemn and sublime is the figure of 
St. Barbara in the midst of a gloomy, rocky landscape; 


XeonarDo's followers 333 

stately and severe La belle Ferroniere of the Louvre^ 
and of the Czartoryski gallery— both after the same 
model used at a later period for the Casio Madonna, 
On account of the same serious and monumental trend 
the Resurrection of the Berlin Gallery should perhaps 
be ascribed not to Leonardo but to Boltrafifio, 

Francesco Melzi, Leonardo's youthful friend, who 
followed him to France and was present at his death, 
is known only by a single painting, Vertummus in the 
Berlin Gallery, But what distinction exhales from 
this delightful work! Even the choice of subject is sin- 
gular. No artist before him, except Leonardo in a 
sketch, had painted that little-known tender scene of the 
Metamorphoses, where Vertummus, the radiant god of 
the seasons, changes himself into a poor old woman 
in order to excite the pity and thereby win the love of 
the chaste Pomona. With what choice taste the 
thin gauze garment of Pomona is arranged, and how 
entrancingly sweet are her dainty Rococo head 
and the smile playing about her mouth! With what 
fine taste of the connoisseur has he chosen all these 
flowers and arranged them into a fragrant still-life! 
True, the same dainty head, the same delight in flowers, 
the same seductive, tender female charms, and the 
same Hellenic spirit recur in Columhina, a painting in 
the Hermitage. If this, as modern research now 
assumes, is the work of Giampetrino, Vertummus 

' This painting is commonly ascribed to Leonardo, and sometimes 
identified with Lucrezia Crivelli, the mistress of Lodovico Sforza. — Ed. 


534 Urtumpb of tbc Sensual 

should also be ascribed to him. His other known 
works are principally Madonnas, rather glassy in 
technique, and in the midst of cosy, almost Nether- 
landish landscapes. 

Bernardino Luini is the perambulating master-work- 
man of the school. The many crowded frescoes which 
he painted for the small towns of upper Italy might 
lead to the under-estimation of his lovable talent. For 
he appears in these as a survivor of the quattrocento. 
Well-ordered composition and beautiful simplicity 
are lacking; and charming details like Magdalen in 
the Crucifixion are lost in the fulness of indifferent 
figures. But in his youth he was a very dainty master, 
a true son of that Milan which sought in love-revelries 
a consolation for the horrors of war. He once painted 
his own portrait as St. Sebastian, looking ecstatically 
out of the picture, as if to charm beautiful women, 
and this trend towards an effeminate joyfulness 
pervades all his works. His picture of the Bathing 
Nymphs in the Palazzo Reale in Milan is something 
unheard-of in the art of the cinquecento; young maidens 
in poses approaching Fragonard, and a landscape as 
boldly handled as by any Impressionist of the present 
day. At a later period he appears to best advantage 
in frescoes, when the problem, as in the Sposali^io 
is to paint soft and dreamy beings. Most reflective 
of all, and most reminiscent of Perugino, are those 
small pictures which he painted for quiet rural churches. 
At a time when religious sentiment was on the wane, 


Xeonar^o's followers 335 

he imparted to biblical subjects an honesty and devoted 
tenderness which seem an echo of the quattrocento. 
He neither thrills nor frightens, but is mild and touching 
and most in place when the subjects are quiet idyllic 
scenes, silent friendliness or happy smiles. His female 
martyrs have an expression of supreme blessedness, 
and with sweet ecstacy Mary regards her Child. One 
quite forgets that many works like the half-length 
Vanity and Modesty are only the solution of one of 
Leonardo's school problems; that in the semi-circular 
fresco in Lugano he had literally taken the Christ-child 
from Leonardo's St. Anne and little John from the 
Vierge aux rochers. The spectator never dreams 
before his paintings, nor is he led into a secret workshop 
reverberating ^vith the throbbing thoughts of a genius. 
But because Leonardo has painted so little, we love 
Luini's works as the emanations of his master's spirit. 
In the pictures of Cesare da Sesto Milanese blood 
is commingled with foreign elements. As he trans- 
planted the ideals of Leonardo to Rome, so also he 
himself adopted something of the Roman style. A 
striving after a grand style and a love of contrast 
take the place of Milanese softness. He regards the 
Eternal City with the eyes of the romanticist, and 
loves to depict native ruins covered with ivy in the 
background of his paintings. The principal example 
of this sentiment for ruins is the Adoration of the 
Kings at Naples, with its mannered and out-stretched 
figures. As the central group of these paintings 


336 XTi'lutupb of tbe Sensual 

recurs almost unchanged in a picture of the Madonna 
in the Hermitage, this also, which formerly bore 
Leonardo's name, was assigned to Cesare da Sesto. 
He is probably the only master in question in that 
lunette in Sant' Onofrio which was also considered 
a youthful work of Leonardo's. In the Baptism oj 
Christ in the former Galleria Borghese he seemed 
half Roman, half Venetian, like a double of Sebastiano 
del Piombo, while in his St. Catherine at Frankfort, 
the feminine ideal of Milan is translated into the 
mystic and sickly — into the style of Gabriel Max. 

The Madonnas of Gaudenzio Ferrari as well as the 
portraits of Bernardino de' Conti are further exempli- 
fications of the fact that the school of Leonardo laid 
the foundations of modern painting of women. After 
Leonardo had shown the way, these masters were the 
first to realise the sensual charm of womanhood. They 
painted incidents like a flash of the eye, a smile wreath- 
ing the lips, the soft weariness following exertion, and 
the perfume of the hair, with the feeling of men to 
whom no sense of power but much appreciation of 
grace is accorded. That effeminate delicacy which has 
characterised so much of modern English art makes 
their works appeal especially to our own time. 

Sodoma, the master of Siena, is the most over-refined 
of all. Like Luini, he also painted a number of in- 
different pictures. Possessing a ready pictorial talent, 
he fulfilled every commission in an elegant manner, 
and appeared, Proteus-like, in the most different 


Xeonar&o*s followers 337 

masks. Yet one feels which works occupied his heart 
and which his hand only. In painting Crucifixions he 
remains altogether cool; and if he attempts to be 
energetic he becomes declamatory. In his pictures for 
the monks of Monte Oliveto he not unaptly played 
the role of Signorelli or Zurbaran; but he took pleasure 
only in the frescoes representing the courtesans at- 
tempting to seduce St. Benedict. 

His delight in shocking the good burghers of Siena 
is a significant trait of his character. During his 
work at Monte Oliveto, he denied entry to the monks; 
and when he did permit it, the first glance of the pious 
brethren fell upon the group of courtesans, whom, upon 
command of the prior, he was compelled to furnish 
with clothes. In the Crucifixion of the Siennese 
Academy he painted himself as a soldier, in a sturdy, 
defiant attitude. The summons of the tax commission 
to make declaration of his possessions he answered 
with a list of all the strange animals which he kept. 

Only when the problem is to paint women can he be 
taken seriously; he is then an enchanting master, 
nervous and sensitive, and inimitable in the manner in 
which he transforms Leonardo's smile into joyous, al- 
most frenzied ecstasy. As he is bold, almost Parisian, 
in the courtesan group at Monte Oliveto, so in the cele- 
brated painting of the Farnesina he depicted the bridal 
confusion of Roxana with the art of a connoisseur, fur- 
nishing a commentary, as in an Ars amandi, with the 
Cupids. Although the Leda of the Galleria Borghese 


338 Xlriumpb of tbe Sensual 

is a copy, it nevertheless gives an idea of the dehcate 
Rococo perfume which pervaded the original. He 
is alsc a fine interpreter of the state of unconsciousness 
and of moments of gentle exhaustion; and the womanly 
sense of shame or a virginal blush could only be ex- 
pressed, as was done by Sodoma in his wonderful figure 
of Eve, by a painter who was entirely a feminist. 

He was even more charmed by the hermaphroditic 
expression in many of Leonardo's drawings of young 
men. When Sebastian dies, his smile is as full of joy 
as if he was destined in the other world to become what 
the abducted Ganymede was to the Olympians. The 
whole character of Sodoma is expressed in the figure 
of Isaac in his Sacrifice of Abraham. This youth 
with the head of a young girl and the delicate hips, 
crossing his full round arms over his bosom, is the 
Antinous of Christian art — an ideal of beauty which 
only occurs in times of the highest culture and greatest 
immorality. The swan in his Leda and the squibs 
which the Siennese burghers sent him furnished the 
logical supplement. There is something strange in the 
activity of this light-hearted artist, who began his 
career, like a grand seigneur, in revelry and riot, 
kept horses for the races, and walked about in silk 
and velvet, escorted by beautiful slaves, to die at last 
not in prison, but in a hospital.^ 

' In his description of Bazzi's life, the statements of which Professor 
Muther follows, Vasnri seems to have been guided by no slight pre- 
judice against the lighthearted and eccentric painter, due perhaps to 
his extreme partisanship for Beccafumi, Bazzi's chief rival at Siena. A 


(Bloroionc 339 

1F111I. ©iorgione 

Even Byzantine Venice had become a heathen city. 
With Aldus Manutius, the refined scholar, the hu- 
manistic movement began; the celebated Academia 
Graeca, in which he united his associates, considered 
itself a Platonic academy. At its meetings Greek was 
the only language spoken; a fine was levied upon every 
one who used an Italian word, and the proceeds were 
used to provide for banquets which remind one of the 
soupers d la grecque of the eighteenth century. The 
Hypnerotomachia Polyphili, that dreamy romance with 
its dainty wood-cuts, is the first monument of this time, 
when a breath of the bright and beautiful days of Hellas 
was wafted over the oriental soil of Venice. 

Painting, heretofore so religiously severe, also be- 
came an inspired hymn to the beauty of this world 
and the Hellenic joy in the senses. Although Madonnas ^ 
and saints were still painted, as in Bellini's days, 
the spirit of the pictures was no longer the same. 
No Christian self-denial but heathen sensuality beams 
from the eyes of these figures. The body, formerly 
despised, becomes free, and voluptuous forms shatter 
the tender casement of the soul. Along with Mary, 

fondness for racing was considered a mark of distinction in those days 
So far from spending his last years in poverty and dying in a hospital, 
Bazzi, the possessor of two houses at Siena, seems to hnve been in 
affluent circumstances and to have lived quietly with his family. This 
is evident from the documents cited in Milanesi's edition of Vasari's 
Lives (Florence, 1878-85), vol. vi. — Ed. 


340, ITriumpb of tbe Sensual 

Venus is honoured, and the gods of Greece make 
their joyful entry. 

At first there is Httle to be seen of this change. 
For the work which stands on the threshold of the 
Venetian cinquecento, the Madonna of Casteljranco, is 
so tender and oblivious of the world that it can hardly 
be distinguished from Bellini's Holy Conversations. 
With the same tone with which the old century passed 
away, the new began. Two men, a young knight and 
a monk, stand guard before the throne of Mary. 
No breath of air moves, but everything is pervaded 
by a deep, silent repose, into which the saints also 
have dreamily sunk. Yet a dainty touch announces 
a new soul-life. However much the pretty oval head 
of the Madonna with its melancholy eyes and simply- 
parted brown hair resembles Bellini's types her sen- 
timents are no longer the same. She silently dreams, 
sadly and tenderly, as if she were thinking of a distant 
lover. Although the figure is pure, it is pervaded by a 
refined sensuality; and one feels that for this artist 
Mary was no longer the Madonna; that he had kissed 
this mouth and had longed for this woman when she 
was absent. 

" Vieni, o Cecilia, 
Vicni t' affretta, 
11 luo t' aspetta 
Giorgio." . . . 

Whether these verses which were upon the back 
of the panel were written by the painter awaiting his 
beloved or by another, is a matter of indifference. 



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(Bioroione 341 

For this other man also felt the delicate sensual per- 
fume wafted from the painting. 

By every trait of his character Giorgione was called 
to be the pioneer of this new art. He was a native 
of the town whose church to-day prizes his altar-piece 
as its most splendid treasure: Castelfranco in the Marca 
Trevisana, to which poets were so fond of giving the 
title of "amorosa." There nature is lyrically soft, 
and the air one breathes is sensuously laden; all is woven 
into a great and dreamy monotony of a mysterious 
and melancholy character. Men who have grown up in 
such surroundings are more sensitive in all their emo- 
tions than those who live among mountains and raw 
cliffs; for the perfume and melody of this strange, soft 
nature render the nerves more vibrating and tender. 
According to the legend, Giorgione was an illegitimate 
offshoot of the ancient noble family of Barbarelli; 
and there is, indeed, something noble in the complicated 
refinement of his nervous system, and something of 
the Shakespearian bastard in the wild way in which 
he stormed through life. 

When he came to Venice he found himself upon his 
true soil. Vasari describes him as a pleasure-loving 
child, a worldling, who plunged full of passion into the 
whirlpool of life, progressing from one love-adventure to 
another, and tremulously enjoying a luxurious and 
sensual life. He depicts him as a galantuomo wandering 
through the streets in the evening with his lute and 
singing ecstatic love-songs to fair ladies. 


342 XTriunipb of tbe Sensual 

When at thirty-two years of age he collapsed, the 
number of his wori-vS was not large, and even smaller 
is the number of those which have come down to us. 
In the earliest of these, the two little pictures in the 
Uffizi, representing the Judgment of Solomon and the 
Childhood of Moses, he still appears as a pupil of 
Bellini. But although the figures are drawn in the 
style of the primitives, one already recognises that 
this artist was destined to become a great landscape 
painter. Softly and delicately, not in hard outlines^ 
the graceful tree-tops dissolve into the soft firmament. 
Pictures like Bellini's Allegory, the figure of a woman 
in a boat gliding so quietly over the floods, had probably 
made the deepest impression upon this dreamer. 

But his admiration of Bellini was soon supplemented 
by that of another master. When, in commission for 
Tuzio Costanzo, the condottiere of Castelfranco, he 
created his first masterpiece, he had already made the 
acquaintance of the man whose art at that time 
illumined all Italy. In 1503-04 Leonardo had resided 
in Venice, and if he did not paint, he at least made 
drawings, and his female heads had certainly been seen 
by Giorgione. For the spirit which beams from the 
eyes of his Mary, a love no longer melancholy and 
self-sacrificing, but quivering and longing, is no longer 
the spirit of Bellini, but of Leonardo da Vinci. As 
he had found in Bellini his ideal as a landscape painter, 
Leonardo revealed to him the path through the joyful 
earthly realm of the senses. 


aioroione 343 

Several idyllic pictures form the transition from the 
Christian to his Hellenic works. At that time a senti- 
ment similar to that of Watteau's day pervaded the 
world. As in the eighteenth century men sought 
relief from the heroic and pompous in the Arcadian 
and the Elysian, so in the cinquecento, after the ascetic 
age of Savonarola, they wished to return into a Sat- 
urnian era, where there had been no Christianity, no 
monks, and no chorals; when the majestic wooded 
halls of the forests took the place of cathedrals; where 
men did not wait for the heavenly happiness, but en- 
joyed the earthly. Of the works of antique literature 
the pastoral poetry — that of Theocritus, Callimachus, 
Longus, and Nonnus — was most popular. As formerly 
Poliziano's pastoral drama Orpheus had been the most 
popular poem of the day, it was now Sazzanaro's 
Arcadia, published by Aldus Manutius. The bucolic 
and happy shepherd life of primeval days was the ideal 
of the spirit ; as we are reminded by Giorgione's Concert 
champeire of the Louvre. 

From this painting one recognises anew Giorgione's 
importance as a landscape painter. A man of sentiment, 
so dependent upon his emotion that he could not exist 
without his Cecilia and died because she was unfaithful, 
became the creator of the Siimmungshild — a painting 
reflecting the mood of the artist. With him everything 
was sentiment; so he was the first to discover language ^ 
in which the soul of nature speaks — light. Like 
Watteau, he never gives a copy of nature, which seems 


344 ZTi-iumpb ot tF3e Sensual 

to exist only in order that happy men may live in her. 
Even the trees quiver as if with tenderness and longing 
and all is enveloped in a dreamy and sensuous at- 
mosphere. In the objects also which he places in these 
landscapes the same longing, soft, and melancholy 
sentiment is re-echoed. He paints shepherds sitting 
as in a golden age near their herds, lost in dreams. 
He loves knights, for they also appear to him as 
the incarnation of days gone by: not wild conquerors 
devastating the land, but quiet dreamers who feel 
themselves the Last Knights; youths of soft, feminine 
forms, whose existence is passed in beautiful devotion 
to love. He depicts antique ruins because they also 
awaken elegiac memories of that distant time when 
no monks preached self-immolation and the cult of the 
senses was a religion. No man has yet guessed what 
he wished to say in his most celebrated work, the 
so-called Familia di Giorgione. Two objects are 
represented which seem to belong to one another and 
yet are strangely contrasted. Cecilia, the Madonna 
of Castelfranco, has become a young mother, nursing 
a child at her bosom. In no respect does she resemble 
the quiet Mary; there is nothing left of the ethereal 
chastity of the quattrocento. 

This picture also prepares us for the one with which 
Giorgione concluded his life-work, his celebrated 
Venus in the Gallery of Dresden. That which in the 
Madonna at Castelfranco was longing, is here fulfilment. 
In unveiled beauty, Cecilia reclines upon the couch. 


"ill 


Correoolo 34S 

The little figure of the Familia has become a life-sized 
female nude, and the Madonna of Castelfranco has 
become Aphrodite. In contrast to Botticelli's Venus, 
in which the spiritual asceticism of the middle age 
still lingers, le cri de la chair here rises joyfully to 
heaven. Soft, undulating limbs are wearily distended. 
Only a man of such refmed sense as Giorgione, painting 
not a picture but an experience, could throw open the 
portals of this new era. 

When he was buried, the work was incomplete, and 
it is almost symbolic that Titian completed it by adding 
the landscape background. Indeed, in a second work 
which also hung incomplete in his studio, one might 
fmd an allegory of Giorgione's own career. It repre- 
sents three philosophers, of whom only the youngest 
turns to the rising sun, while the two elder stand un- 
concerned at his side. So the youthful Giorgione was 
the first to see the rosy dawn of the new epoch; but 
artists older than he, following his leadership, continued 
his life-work. 

■flltJ. Corregglo 

In Correggio, the Leonardo of Parma, another shade 
of the erotic element in Italian painting appears. In 
all the other artists of the epoch the sensuality was 
external. For Giorgione his Cecilia was everything, 
and the sensuality of Bazzi is sufficiently indicated by 
his nickname. In the case of Correggio we know nothing 


346 Uriumpb of tbe Sensual 

of such things. According to Vasari, as a lad he was 
"bashful and inchned to dreaming and melancholy." 
Although he visited different seats of art, he never 
became intimate with any of his colleagues, but was 
interested only in their pictures, inspecting them 
timidly as a cat, without any one knowing of his pre- 
sence. His stay in lascivious Parma was not marked 
by a single scandal, nor did he ever paint a portrait. 
He did not like to look people in the eye, and felt himself 
most comfortable when alone, dreaming about what the 
others had experienced. This distinguishes his painting 
from Giorgione's. While the latter's Fenus has the 
expression of weariness and of the soft repose after 
embraces, Correggio's figures are convulsed by a 
perpetual nervous trembling. His creations are dream- 
land figures, as, mysteriously laughing, they appear 
to the sleeper; the beautiful apparitions of a lonely 
soul full of tender sentiment, never outwardly expressed. 
To this his colour corresponds. In contrast to the 
figures of Giorgione placed in actual surroundings, 
Correggio's live in a dreamland veiled by twilight, 
transporting them into the far distance. The power 
under whose touch they tremble is no warm body, but 
a cloud. 

Correggio's father was a seller of spices and the lad 
passed hours and days in the small shop, the odours 
of which have a stimulating effect upon the nerves. 
If behind the counter he read the Bible, it was neither 
the Books of Moses nor the drama of the Passion, but 




CorrcGOto 347 

the Song of Solomon and the beautiful story of Mag- 
dalen that charmed him. The entire Holy Writ was 
for him a love-story. He became acquainted also 
with the romance of antique legends; for through Lady 
Veronica Gambara his native town had become a seat 
of humanism, and the lady took pleasure in the timid 
lad. One can picture her stroking his locks and drawing 
him tenderly to her side, as she translated for him 
passages from Ovid, and told him the love-tales of 
the ancient gods. With beating heart he heard of 
the amorous adventures of Jupiter, of all the beautiful 
mortals whom he had deluded, of lo and Danae, of 
Antiope and Leda. On closing his eyes at night he 
thought of them in feverish excitement, and they 
followed him like phantoms in his dreams. Such 
were the themes that lived in his spirit, that he wished 
to paint, and that he finally painted. 

True, it was only by a roundabout way that he at- 
tained his end, and he was compelled to create many 
works which were against his temperament. 

The beginnings of his art point to Mantua. In this 
town, to which he had come with Veronica in 151 1, he 
received the first artistic impressions of his life. Man- 
tegna, who still invisibly hovered over Mantua, became 
his first guide. He dreamed long in the Castello di Corte 
before the works of the great master, as a child dreams 
sitting at the feet of a bronze statue. The spirit 
of Mantegna, all that his realism and scholarship had 
created, were for him an unknown world. But one 


34S tirtujnpb ot tbe Sensual 

painting attracted him, the only joyful one among 
Mantegna's works — the nude puUi playing about the 
ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi. They pleased him, be- 
cause they were so coy, so attractive, and so joyous. 
At Mantua he saw also the portrait of Isabella d' Este 
and other drawings by Leonardo, and having seen one 
work by the great magician he was attracted to Milan, 
it is pleasant to picture young Correggio at Milan 
after the return of Leonardo, not venturing to express 
his admiration to the master, but seated timid and 
dreaming before his paintings. He saw that soft 
sjumato which so effectively awakens the sensuous 
vibrating mood — and the heads which had hovered 
before him in his dreams: women quivering with joy, 
children modestly blushing when beautiful female 
saints or loving youthful angels tenderly observe 
them. 

His earlier works reveal how the influence of Man- 
tegna was replaced by that of Leonardo, and finally 
the independent Correggio was evolved. His Madonna 
with St. Francis especially, contains the quintessence 
of what he had adopted from others; and the Betrothal 
of St. Catherine shows the new element which he added. 
Leonardo's female ideal is transformed into a more 
dainty type, that of the Tanagra figurines. A morbid 
delicacy and over-refinement distinguishes him from 
the other painters of the cinquecento as much as it 
unites him with those of the Rococo. Especially in 
the nervous, delicate hands with soft, quivering touch, 


Corregoto 349 

the essence of Correggio's art lies. All the white, 
small, slender hands of princesses which Parmeggianino 
and many later artists painted are derived from 
Correggio's Beirothal of St. Catherine. 

The following year (1518) was the turning point 
of his life, and the work which he created in commission 
for the noble prioress of the nunnery of San Paolo in 
Parma is characteristic not only of himself but of the 
age. Formerly the images of patron saints before 
which the nuns offered their prayers had been esteemed 
suitable decorations for nunneries; but Donna Gio- 
vanna thought in the Hellenic fashion. Diana, whose 
character as goddess of chastity did not prevent her 
from descending to Endymion, was the patroness 
whose crescent she chose for her coat of arms. And 
Correggio did not endeavour, like other masters of the 
Renaissance, to conceive a great and thoughtful 
composition, but confined himself to capricious, 
charming caiiserie. The putti of the Camera degli 
Sposi and the foliated architecture of the Madonna 
della Vittoria lived in his memory; and the result was 
the delicate little beings joyously and gracefully 
sporting about in the midst of the grape-vines on the 
walls and ceilings of the priory. Now comes an abrupt 
change of scene, transporting us into the presence of 
the gigantic cupola frescoes of the church of San 
Giovanni Evangelista and the cathedral of Parma, 
As if Melozzo da Forli or Michelangelo had turned his 
head, the quiet Correggio suddenly became a virtuoso 


350 Uriumpb ot tbe Sensual 

who makes hair flutter and draperies swell. Gigantic 
bodies writhe, throw their arms into the air, distort 
their features; angels thunder and storm through the 
sea of air. The fresco of the cathedral cupola already 
contains the entire heaven that lived in the fantasy 
of the Baroque painters. It is astonishing how he 
mocks at all difficulties and with what sureness he 
treads the path which led from the Renaissance to 
Pater Pozzo.^ And yet how insignificant is the theme 
behind this clanging instrumentation! All is without 
force, form without content, the brows of thinkers 
without thought, mighty gestures without sense or 
purpose. Only in certain details is the former Correggio 
recognisable, as in the beautiful angels joyfully flutter- 
ing about the scene. Even the symbols of the evange- 
Hsts in San Giovanni are in love; the angel of Matthew 
embraces John's eagle, and the lion of Mark jests with 
Luke's calf. 

Correggio's scale was a limited one; and as, after 
his successes in the cupola frescoes, he was of the opin- 
ion that he could accomplish everything, he painted 
a whole series of works which show him from a dis- 
agreeable rather than a lovable side. 

As often as he ventures into the domain of the 
pathetic and endeavours to depict the moments of 
great passion, his pictures are as false as ever was a 
religious painting of Boucher's day. As in the case 

' A celebrated decorative artist of the Baroque period (1642-1709), 
whose chief work is in the church of Sant' Ignazio at Rome.— Ed. 


K 


.1 


I 


CORREGGIO 



THE MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE 

Louvre 


Correaoio 351 

of Rococo painters the gift of depicting dignified and 
quiet manhood was also denied him. His people are 
beautiful as long as they are young, but insipid when 
they grow old. They have done nothing in their 
youth but smile, and now it appears how empty their 
hands were. One often feels that his instincts warned 
him; as when in the Bewailing of the Body of Christ, 
omitting the customary male friends of the Saviour, 
he introduces women alone as mourners, or when in 
his Ecce Homo, contrary to all usage, he introduces 
Mary and Magdalen instead of the soldiers; of course 
not the emaciated mother and remorseful penitent, 
but beautiful women with darkly-shaded eyes, ecstati- 
cally gazing upon an effeminate young man. But 
almost more numerous are the works in which men 
were not at all necessary, but which he spoiled by the 
introduction of empty-headed giants. Just because 
his entire feeling was feminine, he took it into his head 
to label them as men, with the same result as when 
a delicate, elegiac artist like van Dyck in his early 
period imitated Rubens. A hollow striving after 
power took the place of real, powerful grandeur. 
By gigantic theatrical figures placed conspicuously 
in the foreground, or else by virtuose, forced efforts 
suitable enough for cupola frescoes but not for panels, 
he spoiled the sentiment of many of his best 
paintings. Even in the celebrated Holy Night at 
Dresden, his beloved "ragout of frogs' legs" in- 
trudes, depriving a scene which would otherwise 

VOL. I. — 23 


352 Urtuinpb of tbe Sensual 

have been quiet and full of sentiment of its greatest 
charm. 

Q)rreggio is great only when the problem is to render 
not power, but gentle feelings, not in pathos but in 
harmless play and laughing joyfulness; in painting 
not men but women and children; and especially 
where he remains the painter of the graces and confines 
himself within the bounds of a charming Rococo. 
His name " Allegri " well indicates the confines of his 
art. 

In describing his Madonnas one cannot, of course, 
use the same terms as we apply to those of Botticelli, 
Bellini, or Perugino. When these masters lived a 
mighty, solemn and religious art still existed. They 
understood the tenderness of religious tradition in all 
of its mystic charm, and had learned the significance 
of the qualities necessary for its expression. In com- 
parison with them, Correggio appears affected and 
empty. Where he cannot be pathetic he is afi'ectedly 
sweet; he translates their sincere devotion into earthly 
gallantry, into a dialogue of languishing glances and 
significant smiles. It is characteristic that Joseph no 
longer feels comfortable in these scenes; he disappears 
to avoid disturbing his wife with her friends, who in 
their turn are very liberal with their attentions. Not 
satisfied with- making eyes at Mary, if she smiles upon 
one of them, the other uses the opportunity to coquet 
with a beautiful lady among the spectators. This 
is the beginning of that exchange of glances between 


I 


Correaaio 353 

the figures in the painting and the observer which was 
a heritage of Correggio to Baroque painting. Correggio, 
if any one, was the genuine painter of the time, which 
of all the teachings of Christianity followed only one, 
" Little children, love one another," and that one 
almost too literally. Finally, it is a mockery to misuse 
the figures of Mary and the saints in order to paint 
love scenes. 

Correggio felt this, and as far as possible he trans- 
lated his figures into heathen conceptions. In the 
Betrothal of St. Catherine Sebastian might just as well 
have held a bunch of grapes instead of an arrow and 
been called Bacchus. St. John is transformed into 
an Adonis, and St. George into a Roman general. 
But his life-work was just as little completed with 
what he had previously done as was that of Mantegna 
when he had completed the Triumph of CcBsar. All 
those erotic visions which had dawned upon his youth 
when Veronica Gambara had translated Ovid to him, 
but had remained dreams, had still to take bodily 
form; and so at the end of his life he found at last his 
proper province. The same woman who gave oc- 
cupation to Mantegna, Isabella d' Este, gave also to 
Correggio the opportunity of realising the ideals of his 
childhood. The last picture which Mantegna had 
painted for her represented the Banishment of the 
Vices; but now all the beings which Savonarola had 
sent into exile returned in triumph. Not until these 
pictures in which, turning away from Christianity, he 


354 TTriuinpb of tbe Sensual 

sang only the power of love, was the true Correggio 
revealed. Here he has thrown off the mask, and the 
former dissonance between theme and conception 
has disappeared. The emaciated image of the Re- 
deemer no longer hangs on the cross, but, as in the 
etching by Rops, a female body, delicate as condensed 
light, appears; and over it, instead of the letters I. 
N. R. I., the word Eros is inscribed. 

In his London picture, the 5cWZ oj Cupid, he lays 
down the basic theme. But the paintings of which 
one chiefly thinks when Correggio's name is mentioned 
are Aniiope in the Louvre, Dance in the Borghcse 
Gallery, and Leda at Berlin — all intended by the 
Gongazas as presents for Charles V. The entire life 
of this man, who had lived so secluded from the outer 
world, had been a love-dream with beautiful women 
and laughing Cupids hovering about. For this very 
reason he created the most sensual paintings of his 
age, as Watteau most daintily rendered the fra- 
grance of the Rococo. Being a sickly, lonely man, he 
never painted reality, but only dreams. It is no 
accident that the eighteenth century was so en- 
thusiastic about Correggio, and called him the prince 
of the Rococo. Sensitive and weakly, nervous and 
pampered, he represented the ideal of this over-refined 
age. Correggio born two centuries later is called 
Boucher. 

His lo at Vienna signifies the acme of the age of 
the triumph of sensuality. Here at last the word is 


CORREGGIO 



THE SCHOOL OF CUPID 

National Gallery, London 


COVVCQQiO 355 

spoken which lay upon the Hps of Leonardo, when he 
converted the chaste and pious womanly ideal of 
Savonarola into his own female type, glowing with 
life and vibrating with passion. Correggio offers grat- 
ification to the longing of the age. Along this path no 
further progress was possible, and the great reaction 
now began. All those masters whose art was a 
reaction upon that of the preceding epoch could not 
conceive of the nude without sensuality. By the 
following artists the nude was withdrawn from the 
sphere of the senses and raised to an artistic problem. 
The lines of Michelangelo, 

" Woe to the man whose blind and reckless hand 
Drags beauty down to where the senses stand," 

were intended not indeed for Correggio, of whom the 
Roman Titan knew nothing, but for his spiritual 
ancestor, Michelangelo's great rival, Leonardo. But 
they apply to the art which ruled in Italy from Leo- 
nardo to Correggio. The epoch of eroticism and of 
sensuality was followed by one of unapproachable 
majesty. 


(Tbaptcr ID 
Ube /iDajestic an& tbe Xlltanic 

1. Zbe Conception ot 3Beautg in tbe CJnquecento 

THE change experienced by Italian painting after 
the disappearance of the influence of Leonardo 
can only be understood by reference to the 
general change in taste since the beginning of the 
cinquecenio. For all great epochs are pervaded by 
one artistic tendency, which permeates uniformly 
all expressions of life. As the men build, move about, 
and clothe themselves, so also do they paint. From 
this point of view it is easy to understand why the 
painting of the later sixteenth century considered 
as beautiful exactly the opposite of what the waning 
quaiirocento had honoured. 

// Coriegiano, the manual of the perfect cavalier, 
published by Count Castiglione in 1 516, is an account 
of what was at that time considered gentlemanly in 
society. It is improper, said Castiglione, to make 
violent or awkward gestures, to take part in rapid 
dances. The antique gravitas — a grave and sustained 
dignity — is mentioned as the essence of good tone. 

In accordance with this sentiment a style of costume 

356 


Beauts in tbe Cinquecento 357 

came into fashion which in its majestic fulness would 
permit none but serious, sustained gestures. The 
fifteenth century had loved an angular, coy slenderness 
in costume ; somewhat stiff and pedantic for women, 
tight-fitting for men. Fashion delighted in the gay, 
lively colours, embroidered borders, glittering chains, 
golden caps, and gleaming pearl necklaces to be seen 
in Jan van Eyck's paintings, and in ruffles, creases, 
and angular folds. In the sixteenth century this was 
all eliminated in favour of a great sweep of line. The 
form of garments is of grandiose simplicity, not over- 
loaded as formerly with dainty details. While formerly 
the suppleness and slimness of the body had been 
emphasised by short sleeves and tight-fitting hose, 
the costume is now treated with breadth and dignity. 
Women are clad in heavy rustling brocades, the puffed 
sleeves of which make the body appear broad and 
majestic. The skirt, formerly short, now received a 
mighty train, only permitting a sustained walk, an 
andante mcestoso. A black cap and wide mantle, rich 
in folds, give the men a conscious, serious, and impos- 
ing expression, their movements, formerly so dainty, 
are full and round. 

The portraits of the cinquecento differ in yet another 
respect from those of the preceding epoch. It is not 
unimportant for the psychology of the age that bust 
portraits, formerly the exclusive fashion, now developed 
into half and three-quarter lengths. While for such 
a soulful time as the quattrocento the head alone 


358 /IDajestic mxO Zitmic 

was of importance, the man of the cinquecento, for 
whom dignity of movement had become so important, 
preferred, if possible, to be portrayed in full fig- 
ure. Whereas formerly only slenderness was popular, 
to emphasise which the arms were pressed firmly 
against the body, now a pose is sought which will 
admit of the greatest possible breadth of movement. 
In consequence of the majestic impression which 
artists sought to make, the accessories are also changed. 
Even with Memling, the men still held a rosary, the 
women a prayer-book; and Perugino added to his 
portrait of Francesco dell' Opere the inscription, 
Timeie Deum. Now the ladies hold a fan and the 
hands of the men rest upon a sword. The conception 
of majesty would no longer permit of an humble 
attitude towards the other world. Even the age of the 
men portrayed is changed. At the beginning of the 
quattrocento, when it was the custom to observe every- 
thing microscopically, portrait-painters preferred the 
heads richest in detail — in wrinkles and folds — and 
consequently matrons and old men. Later, when the 
tendency towards daintiness prevailed, girls and 
youthful pages were the favourite subjects; and even 
when men were represented, they retained something 
youthful in their tight-fitting costume, curled hair, 
and smooth-shaven faces. The cinquecento has nothing 
to compare with the graceful, girlish busts depicted at 
the close of the fifteenth century. Whether one 
thinks of Lavinia, Dorothea, or the Donna Velaia, the 


Beauty in tbe Cinquecento 359 

galleries of beauty of the sixteenth century consist 
only of ripe, well-developed womanhood. In like 
manner the portraits of youths are rare. The subjects 
are almost exclusively men, no longer shaved but with 
countenances framed by a serious beard; at that age 
which most gives the impression of gravitd riposaia — 
of dignity and power. 

Just as men appear serious and powerful in their 
portraits, so the apartments in which they move 
are great and spacious. During the Early Renais- 
sance the chief aim of architects was to attain fresh 
grace and slender elegance in their buildings. The 
slender columns of the palaces resemble the people 
in their tight-fitting clothes; and the walls of the 
buildings were as richly and daintily decorated as the 
costumes. In the sixteenth century, in harmony with 
the changes in costume and movement, there appears 
also in architecture impressive power and simple 
grandeur. All trifling ornament is avoided; the forms 
are heavy and massive, the apartments high and 
broad, in order that the majestic bearing may not be 
restricted. 

As the paintings must correspond with these men 
and this architecture, a new ideal of beauty finds its 
introduction into art. It is sufficient to compare 
the Madonnas of the cinquecento with those of the pre- 
vious epoch. In the quattrocento the forms were 
slender and delicate, austere and budlike; in Leonardo's 
day the closed bud began to open; and now it beams 


36o /IDaje9tic anO ZTitanfc 

in mature, summer-like splendour. Another language 
of gesture is developed. Whereas in the paintings of 
Filippino and Pollajuolo the figures had walked in a 
dainty measure, they now stand firmly upon the ground. 
Then they had stretched the little finger and held 
their garments with affected elegance; now they 
affect neither the graceful gestures of the quattrocento 
nor the soft, subtle ones of Leonardo's day, but broad 
and princely movements. 

The psychological change is no less radical. People 
who preferred the sword and fan to prayer-book and 
rosary in their portraits could have no more use for 
humble saints, nor conceive of the divine in servile 
form. In place, therefore, of the umilta, which had 
been the ideal of the age of Savonarola, maestd, now 
appears. If formerly Mary's hair was covered by a 
gloomy matron's veil, she is now clad in princely 
garments. If she had formerly been the devoted 
handmaiden of the Lord, and later in the works of 
Correggio a woman of the world, she has now become 
the queen of heaven. Neither melancholy nor 
tenderness beams from her eye; but proud and dis- 
tinguished, lofty and unapproachable, she glances 
down from above. An odor di regina pervades her 
being. The complete absence of the motive of the 
nursing Madonna, to which the age of Leonardo had 
imparted a slight tendency towards the sensual, must 
likewise be attributed to these conceptions of dignity 
and princely majesty. 


Beautv? in tbe Cinquecento 361 

The form and the composition of the paintmgs also 
became different. The small and detailed panels 
which the former age had loved now appeared trivial ; 
for the impression of the sublime could only be obtained 
in life-sized or more than life-sized figures. The 
miniature painting of the former epoch therefore finds 
no continuation. As regards composition Leonardo 
had indeed taken a decisive step. Improving upon the 
mere juxtaposition of detail of the quattrocento, he 
had attained the principle of compressing within a 
small space the greatest possible action. This tendency 
to develop the scene briefly and without accessories 
by means of a few figures remained in the fifteenth 
century the prevailing one. But Leonardo's sense 
of space, his concentration of action within narrow 
limits, no longer suited a time used to such spacious 
apartments. As the high bearing of the cinquecento 
could not thus be limited, artists confined themselves 
more and more to a few large figures, moving freely and 
easily in the midst of a spacious architecture. It is a 
characteristic circumstance that, whereas during the 
quattrocento painters were often at the same time 
goldsmiths, they are now at the same time architects. 
Then they affected microscopic vision and joy in decora- 
tion, now a broad view and impressive sense of roomi- 
ness. The triangular composition which Leonardo 
preferred now seemed too angular. As in costume 
they no longer preferred bell-shaped dresses and small 
shoulders for women, but full hips and puffy sleeves, 


362 /IDajestlc an& tCltanfc 

they also arranged the composition of the picture in 
soft, flowing lines. The circle, bow, curve, and a 
wavy line are their prevailing schemes of composition. 
Even the ideal of landscape followed this new 
taste. The fifteenth century, with its taste for sharp, 
angular lines, loved also in landscape jagged, harsh 
outlines, and depicted it in the angular bareness 
of its forms. The sixteenth, which affected softness 
of line, prefers also in nature curved and wavy forms, 
as is shown by the use of vegetable forms to soften 
the hard outlines. The earlier artists, who loved 
rugged, muscular men, exhibited the skeleton of the 
landscape, to which those of the cinquecento, who 
preferred full and imposing bodies, added flesh. 
The fifteenth century, which painted slender people 
in hose, preferred cypress, pine, and fir trees with 
slender and ascending, tapering and pointed forms. 
The painters of the cinquecento, on the other hand, 
avoided these trees because only the full, well-rounded 
form of trees rich in foliage corresponded to the 
majestic beings with broad gestures which appear in 
their paintings. The parallel even applies to the 
flowers. As the fifteenth century, which had created 
the graceful portraits of maidens, saw in landscape 
principally the charm of the springtime, the sixteenth, 
whose ideal was the well-developed woman, saw nature 
only in the glowing splendour of summer. 

The artists themselves are as majestic as the pictures 
which they painted. In Castagno's day, they were 


Tlitlan 363 

wild comrades, uncouth and defiant as tne unhewn 
walls of Palazzo Pitti; in the days of the Magnifico 
they became aesthetes. Savonarola made friars of 
them, and afterwards they plunged with avidity 
into the whirlpool of life. Now they are settled 
men of the gravity which Castiglione describes as 
characteristic of the perfect cavalier; radiant in 
majestic distinction, and associating as equals with 
the great men of the world. 

1fir. Titian 

Titian, the mighty king of the Venetian cinquecento, 
has the same relation to Giorgione as clarified, quiet 
manhood to the passion and ecstasy of youth. With 
Giorgione, one thinks of the verses which Mogens 
w.ote of himself: 

" In Sehnen leb' ich 
In Sehnen "; 

and with Titian of the words of Faust: 

"Entschlafen sind nun wilde Triebe 
Mit jedem ungestiimen Thun." 

Not in Venice itself, not even in the neighbouring 
plain, but in the distant Alps, he first saw the light of 
day; and his early years were spent in the midst of 
solemn pine woods and mighty mountain walls. This 
alone gave to his personality a different character. 
When he— a Hercules in growth, deep chested (for 
he had breathed only the keen mountain air), his 


364 /iDajestic nn^ Ultanic 

features sun-browned as if cast in bronze, his eye 
strong and clear, and with that keen, eagle glance 
which one ascribes to the world's conquerors — came 
from his rude mountains into the shimmering wonder- 
city, into the sultry atmosphere of Venice, he stood be- 
fore the easel with a consciousness that he would 
achieve greatness and become the prince of Venetian 
painters, simply because he willed it. This force 
of will, this (TU)(j>pocrvvr], the serious direction of life, 
never deserted him. 

As in the case of almost every other artist, there 
was a period in Titian's life when he was not himself. 
When he painted the Gypsy Madonna at Vienna he 
wandered in Bellini's path, and in the Tribute-Money 
he followed Leonardo. So there are also paintings by 
him which seem the product of Giorgione's art: like 
the Three Ages of Man and Heavenly and Earthly Love. 
But just these paintings show that Titian never 
painted real Siimmungshilder. Under his firm hands 
the soft fabric of Venice received the quality of granite. 
Even works like the Heavenly and Earthly Love, 
notwithstanding their ravishing beauty, are hardly 
dreamy and melting. Titian is no dreamer; he does 
not possess the tear-shimmering elegiac and bucolic 
qualities of Giorgione. When he is genuine, the real 
Titian is lofty and powerful, stony and firm as the 
mountains of his home. The light that flows about 
his figures is not sultry and sensual, but cold and clear. 
Terms like lovely, charming, or dreamy can as little be 



FLORA 

Uffizi Gallery, Florence 


Ii;itian ,365 

applied to his works as to his home, the awe-inspiring 
hills of Cadore; but they may properly be termed 
powerful and majestic. The sublime clement, cor- 
responding to the nature upon which the first astonished 
glance of the lad fell, and also the primeval power 
of the mountaineer replaces with him the dreamy 
softness of Giorgione, the son of the plain. He has 
something of the primeval trees of his home, which, 
growing in a stony, precipitous soil, were early strength- 
ened to defy all elements, because their roots were 
so tough and their branches so firm. He even has 
much of the cruel egotism of such giant trees. As 
they robbed all the lesser shrubbery about them of 
sunlight, in order that their own foliage might be 
developed on all sides, so Titian, in accordance with the 
right of the stronger, pushed aside with his powerful 
elbows all those who would have lived and created 
beside him. 

Yet another phase of Titian's art may be explained 
from his mountain origin. The house in which he 
was born lies at the uttermost end of the village, where 
the hill begins and the Pieve roars down from storm- 
capped heights. He heard the wind sweep through the 
mighty tree-tops and rattle the joints of the houses; 
he saw uprooted stones crush against the shore, and 
the rain pour down from black storm-clouds. So 
he was the first to associate with the quiet repose and 
the tender lyricism of Venetian painting a dramatic 
and impassioned element. 


366 /iDajestic an& Tlitanic 

The two principal works which belong in this 
class, the Baitle of Cadore and Peter Martyr, were 
destroyed by fire — as if the elements wished to revenge 
themselves for his wild portrayal of their destructive 
power. But ancient prints have handed down their 
content. In a narrow ravine from which no escape 
is possible, men and horses struggle; the smoke of 
burning villages arises; rain and lightning stream 
and strike from the gloomy cloud. A wild and stormy 
note sounds through his Peter Martyr. The figure of 
the saint is athletic and powerful ; that of the murderer 
bending over him is wild and gigantic; their garments 
rustle and the tree-tops bend in the wind. 

If his Assumption upon its appearance only created 
cool astonishment, the reason was that in a conservative 
city like Venice and in the midst of a quiet, priestly, 
solemn art, the picture was felt to be unsuitable. 
As if drawn by a celestial magnet Mary, her mighty 
arms out-stretched, ascends towards heaven. Her 
dark hair flutters in the wind, the folds of her garments 
swell grandiosely, and a roar like the moving wings 
of the archangels sounds through the air; astonished, 
the apostles stretch their arms upward. In the 
church of the Frari, before the Pesaro Madonna one 
first recognises the dramatic action which Titian 
brought into Venetian art. At the base of a mighty 
column, powerful as those which were in future to 
support St. Peter's, Mary sits; not in the centre of the 
painting, nor even in full face, as Byzantine tradition 




TTitian 367 

demanded. For the column is erected on the side 
of the painting, and is balanced only by a fluttering 
banner which one of the praying figures unfolds. 
With this the principles of composition of the past 
are deserted; the lines are not arranged in regular arch- 
itectonic order; a composition which reckons only 
with coloured masses takes the place of regular linear 
arrangements. 

True, this one characteristic is not the determina- 
tive for Titian's art. Although his mountain origin 
explains a great deal in which he differs from the more 
naturalised Venetians, he nevertheless came as a 
young man to Venice. For this reason his art does 
not always remind of the summits of the dolomite 
Alps, but more often of the quiet mirror of the lagoons. 

That Titian did not become a stormy dramatist 
is, aside from the conditions of the time, the result 
of the course of his life. Never had an artist a more 
even career; never did one understand better how to 
shape life into a work of art. His whole existence 
was a single great harmony, without want or mighty 
struggles, without convulsions. As early as 15 16, 
Titian, receiving the legacy of his master Bellini, 
was appointed the official painter of Venice, and his 
course of fortune, a lifelong triumphal procession, 
began. In 1520 he appeared at the zenith of his fame; 
no meteor, but a quiet gleaming star, which, gradually 
but constantly ascending and in a slow course without 
diminution of power, brightens the firmament. The 

VOL- I. — 24 


368 /FOajestlc an5 Ultantc 

mightiest princes of Europe loaded him with com- 
missions and honours: Charles V., who summoned 
him to his court at Bologna and Augsburg, Pope 
Paul III., and Francis 1. of France, who, in flattering 
letters, sued for his favour. Two sons and a daughter 
of radiant beauty filled his house with joy — that 
patrician home which he erected far from the turmoil 
of the market-place, and where he lived independently, 
devoted to art and to his friends. Here he received 
Henry III. with princely splendour; here was the scene 
of those social gatherings which remind one of Feuer- 
bach's Dante in Ravenna. Proud senators and noble 
ladies wandered through the shady arbours of his 
gardens, and when the sun had sunk, and the distant 
islands gleamed in evening twilight, the laughter of 
the gondoliers, song, and the music of lutes sounded 
over the lagoon. "All princes, learned men, and 
distinguished persons who came to Venice visited 
Titian," relates Vasari; for "not only in his art was 
he great, but he was a nobleman in person." 

This distinction has also left its mark upon "his art. 
What we call the idealism of Titian is not the result 
of aesthetic reflection, but the natural point of view 
of a man who wandered upon the heights of life, never 
knew trivial care, nor even experienced sickness; and 
therefore saw the world healthy and beautiful, in 
gleaming and majestic splendour. Artlessly he ap- 
proaches things which an idealist would have avoided, 
as when in his Danae he contrasts the royal in the person 


Tlittan 369 

of his heroine with the plebeian in the ugly old woman; 
or when he depicts the Presentation of Mary in the 
Temple as a great public gathering in the sense of Gen- 
tile Bellini, in which senators and bedecked patrician 
women, market-women and beggar boys are presented. 
But even the most ordinary he ennobles; the peasant 
riding upon his ass to market has the great style of the 
metopes of the Parthenon; and all his works are per- 
vaded by a great repose, the royal tranquillity of 
his own being. 

In his portraits this style is especially conspicuous. 
He never attempts to beautify or flatter in a servile 
way. With awful realism he portrayed the old and 
wasted body of Paul III. with the trembling spider 
fingers, the thin half-decayed lips, the bleary eyes 
whose crafty, fox-like glitter is all that is still alive 
in this mummy. In like manner Charles V. was well 
advised when he named Titian his Apelles. While 
other painters had painted only his pale, scrofulous, 
icy mask, Titian ennobled it with something of his 
own majesty. That black knight in steel armour in 
the Madrid picture, riding with tilted lance over the 
battle-field at daybreak, is not the loiterer with whom 
the electors of Germany trifled, the confused, hesitating 
mind which received its political instruction from 
Granvella the chancellor; but the personification of 
the coldness of a great general in battle, and of destiny 
itself approaching, silent and unavoidable. And the 
emaciated reticent man, who in the Munich portrait 


370 /IDajcstic an^ Uitantc 

sits shivering upon the veranda of his palace, enveloped 
in spite of blooming summer in thick fur, is not the 
melancholy grey-beard, broken in body and will, who, 
disgusted with the world and with himself, a year 
later retired as a hermit to the monastery of San Yuste, 
and there, surrounded by ticking clocks and black cof- 
fins, constantly celebrated his own funeral. Titian had 
given him that of which Charles in his best years boasted 
—the penetrating intelligence of the greatest statesman 
of his day and the Olympian indifference of the ruler 
of two worlds. 

Although Titian is celebrated in text-books as the 
painter of kings because the kings of the sixteenth 
century sat to him for their portraits, the title is more 
justified in a reverse sense. The man who was himself 
a prince among his associates ennobled, like a king 
by the grace of God, every one who applied to him 
for his patent of nobility. The artist who, when the 
plague snatched him away, was buried not like Pc- 
rugino and Ghirlandajo in the potter's field, but like 
a king in the church of the Frari, made princes of all 
men. Aretino, the choleric man of letters, looks like 
Jupiter whose darkening brow makes the great of the 
earth tremble. The little Strozzi maiden seems a 
king's child; and his daughter Lavinia is transformed 
into a Greek goddess, who has enveloped her mighty 
limbs in the splendid garb of the Renaissance in order 
to linger for an hour among mortals. 
His landscapes are the result of the same feeling for 


TITIAN 



THE MAN WITH THE GLOVE 

Louvre 


Ultian 371 

style. He has painted nature in all her moods, but 
convincing truth is never lacking. Every detail 
shows an artist who has grown great in nature, with 
whom he never lost touch. Yet his biographers have 
endeavoured in vain to identify the localities; for 
Titian's landscapes, true in detail and inspired by the 
scenery of his home, are never exact copies of reality. 
The azure tone of the distance is deeper, the brown 
of the leaves warmer, and the light of the sun more 
gleaming. He has created a sublime world, superior 
to the earthly world in nobility, because as a landscape 
painter he depicted not nature but himself. By 
reason of this exalted style he has become the painter 
of the heroic landscape, the forerunner of Poussin and 
Claude. His reputation was so firmly founded that 
the age of classicism, the epoch of Winckelmann, still 
called him the Homer of landscape. 

This epithet leads us to another characteristic — 
the feeling for the primeval and the patriarchal gen- 
erally associated with the name of Titian. One can 
only conceive him as he stands in the portrait of the 
Berlin Gallery, mighty as a patriarch of the first age 
of the world. Eighty years have passed over him, but 
an indestructible power lies in that head, with its 
fiery, gleaming eye and the high and mighty forehead. 
A heavy fur cloak envelops his body and the chain 
of the Golden Fleece adorns his breast — not conspicu- 
ously but naturally. In this picture all conceptions 
of Titian are united: the distinguished gentleman. 


372 Majestic anO XTitantc 

the son of the Alps, but above all the Homeric patriarch. 
Although there are numerous other portraits of 
him, not one shows him as a decayed old man, or as 
a youth. He seems always the aged man, with whom 
the conception of youth is as difficult to unite as with 
Jehovah, "the ancient of days." To this mature old 
age, long after Giorgione rested under the sod, his 
most important works belong. They are the youthful 
works of an old man, the full, ripe creations of a patri- 
arch who remained ever young. This is not unim- 
portant for their artistic comprehension. 

For Titian never painted the springtime nor winter, 
when the rigidity of death covers the earth. The 
beautiful sunny October days, when thick blue grapes 
gleam from the dark foliage; when the leaves shimmer 
in warm, brown tones, and succulent fruit loads the 
trees— such is Titian's season. It is no accident that he 
is so fond of placing a basket of ripe apples in his 
pictures of the Madonna, or of giving his daughter a 
bowl of fruit. These peaches, grapes, melons, and 
oranges in their gleaming, golden splendour meant for 
Titian what the lily did for Botticelli, the master of 
the springtime. Even when flowers appear, they 
are never spring blossoms — snowballs, crocus, anemones 
or gentian— but the well-developed flowers of the 
autumn, and perhaps also pansies or violets, because 
they are more sonorous and less youthful in colour. 
As the autumn of the year so also he preferred the 
autumn of the day — the evening hour, when a deep 


tritfan 373 

harmony of colour suffuses all things; even after a 
long, beautiful day the earth lies in repose before the 
veil of night sinks over it. 

Corresponding to this also is his ideal of woman, 
with this difference, that she is usually portrayed ten 
years younger than man. For they are not exactly 
autumnal, these mighty women who seem never to 
wither, but to beam in an eternal, powerful beauty. 
If it is not autumn, neither is it springtime; but the 
high summer in its rich, mature splendour. Neglecting 
youth in its dewy freshness and its coy grace, he 
painted only the proud majesty of the mature 
woman. 

He paints her with a serious, quiet feeling of a settled 
manhood, which no longer knows dreaming or longing. 
The star which illumines his work is not Venus, but the 
evening star. The circumstance that no traditions 
survive about the models of Titian points to his dif- 
ference from Giorgione. It is indeed related that his 
yenus in the Uffizi represents Eleonora, the Duchess of 
Urbino, and for the others fair-haired Lombard women 
may have been his models, or German maidens from 
the distant Alps. For the proud and mighty female 
type of his paintings has nothing in common with the 
small, brown, black-eyed Venetians, who in their 
little wooden slippers glide over the Piazza di San 
Marco, as nimble as lizards. The Venetians of the 
cinquecento probably regarded Titian's women with 
similar eyes to those with which the Romans gazed 


374 /iDajestic an& TTltanic 

upon the German queen Thusnelda, marching royal 
and proud in the triumphal procession of Germanicus. 

The principal thing remains that Titian, according 
to Vasari's account, painted mostly from his own 
imagination, and only used the female model in case 
of necessity. Unlike Giorgione, the first to make a 
pilgrimage to the isle of Cythera, Titian knew neither 
passion nor desire. A female body did not signify a 
woman for him, but a harmony of form, line, and col- 
our. Like his picture of Alfonso d' Este placing his 
mailed fist upon the bosom of his beloved is Titian's 
feeling for women. 

In this Olympian repose, this lofty patriarchal 
tranquillity, he is the most Hellenic of all Christian 
painters. Even Correggio was not capable of con- 
ceiving the nude from the purely artistic standpoint, 
but inserted the most un-Grecian element imaginable, 
that of desire, into the Hellenic worship of beauty. 
Titian's figures have nothing languishing or tempting, 
and no sensual smile plays about their features. 
Even when Jupiter disguised as a satyr surprises the 
nymph Antiope, or Danae receives the golden rain, 
his works are pervaded by the candour of antique 
sculpture, a majestic sublimity which makes them 
almost sacred pictures. Calmly, without desire, the 
great black eyes of these women shine, and because 
they are so unapproachable and so free from all 
earthly longing, they are free also from prudish- 
ness and everything trivial. Their nudity is as 


tTitfan 375 

awe-inspiring as the exalted repose of Aphrodite of 
Melos. 

This Hellenic spirit is also expressed in his religious 
paintings. "Hellenism, what was it? Measure, dis- 
tinction, clearness." Schiller's definition applies to no 
Christian master as it does to Titian. True, Christian 
notes are occasionally sounded in his works. When 
he depicts martyrdoms like that of St. Laurence, or 
the Magdalen as a crushed penitent, the Bible and 
skull at her side, painted for Philip I. — these are the 
heralds of that convulsed and ecstatic spirit which 
dominated the close of the sixteenth century. But 
even in such works he remains solemn and measured. 
In his Madonnas a festal Hellenic conception and 
classic purity have displaced the Christian spiritualism. 
The fall of the drapery is broad and majestic, the 
movement full and graceful. Not only Mary but all 
his saints have attained Hellenic distinction. They 
are animated by a feeling of princely power, not of 
vassal humility, by strength and not by weakness. 
Their bodies are powerful and their features bespeak 
a commanding majestic spirit. As Titian himself 
associated as an equal with the kings of Europe, so 
these saints associate in proud independence with 
their God. In all respects he seems the son of the 
great age when Pericles and Phidias lived. One does 
not think of clouds of incense in the twilight of Christian 
cathedrals, but of the murmur of the sea waves and 
of the solemn grandeur of the temples of Paestum. 


376 /IDajestic auD TIttanic 

1F1I1I. Cbe Contemporaries of (Titian 

Although Titian was the centre of Venetian art as 
Leonardo of Milanese and Durer of German, the follow- 
ing are independent masters, each one of whom has 
added a new province to the realm of beauty. None 
of them, however, equals the giant of Pieve in his all- 
embracing power. 

In the works of Palma Vecchio the sofc repose of 
Venetian art almost degenerates into ennui without 
temperament. He painted much the same subjects as 
Titian: especially broad pictures in which the Madonna 
surrounded by saints is seated in evening landscape. 
As his activity began at a very early period, he seems 
even to have introduced a stylistic innovation in that 
he was the first to substitute full-length for the half- 
length figures popular in Cima's day. His landscapes 
also are very beautiful, and hardly to be distinguished 
externally from Titian's. The joyful peace and charm 
of his native town of Serinalta suffuses them. The 
eye is delighted with luxuriant fruitful valleys, brown 
slopes, blue distances, and the sun spreading a glowing 
red over dark ranges of mountains. In many of his 
pictures (as in Ruth and Boai at Dresden) there is 
something cosily countrified, such as Titian has attained 
only in some of his wood-cuts. But he seldom passes 
beyond this pleasant thoughtfulness and a certain 
mediocrity. As Serinalta, Palma's birthplace, is 
neither a sultry plain like Giorgione's home, nor an 


Zbc Contemporaries of ITitian 377 

Alpine region like Titian's, so his art is neither sensual 
and dreamy nor powerful and sublime. It is indeed 
attractive, but smooth and superficial; sympathetic 
in colour, but without fire; and nowhere is temperament 
or spontaneous sentiment revealed. No matter how 
many pictures he painted, it is always the same paint- 
ing. Whether Mary, Barbara, Ottilia, or Theresa is 
represented is of as little significance as if in our own 
day Vinea labels his heads Ninetta, Lisa, or Giulietta. 
The same head and empty forms always recur; and if 
the lady, by way of a change, appears not clothed 
but nude, it makes no difference. Standing, she is 
called Eve; reclining, Venus. One of these pictures 
of Venus hangs in Dresden near the wonderful work 
of Giorgione ; but a world-wide chasm separates them. 
What with Giorgione had been a transport of love, 
an ecstatic song of embraces, is with Palma the 
idealised portrait of a tiresome beauty lying upon a 
bed in order to display the full linear rhythm of her 
figure. 

Even his portraits, which made him the most 
popular fashionable painter of Venice, suffer from 
idealistic retouches. True, these women are majestic 
enough; they are even imposing in the fulness of their 
wavy, luxuriant hair fastened with a pearl chaplet, 
in their voluptuous outlines and puffed silk sleeves, 
as rigid and festal as if a wire frame were fastened 
beneath. Sometimes they raise with ample gesture 
their heads of golden hair; sometimes they are on the 


378 /iDajestic an& Uitanic 

point of powdering themselves; or else they do nothing 
at all but lay their hand to their head and gaze with 
a glance which might be seductive if it were not so 
stupid. It is a question whether this unintelligent 
expression is to be ascribed to Palma or to the fair 
Venetians themselves. Women of intellectual ability, 
like Cassandra Fedeli and Caterina Cornaro, were 
certainly rare in Venice, and there were perhaps few 
whose natural horizon extended beyond the powder- 
box. But even the toilette has its poetry, as has been 
shown by the Rococo painters and by Rossetti. In 
Raima's hands, grace and delicacy, fire and gentleness 
of the eye, tenderness and mocking laughter are all 
lost in the same tiresome majesty. All the delicate 
dishes of the earth are changed into cold roast veal. 

After Raima's death his heritage passed to Raris 
Bordone. Like Palma he also painted the most varied 
themes. Most of his pictures belong to that genre- 
class introduced by Gentile Bellini: scenes from 
Venetian history played amidst a rich architectural 
setting. The only difference, corresponding to the 
difference in time, is that the architecture now bears 
the style of the High Renaissance and the people no 
longer move about stiffly but with ample dignity. 
But, like Raima, he is principally known as a painter 
of Venetian women. Alm.ost every gallery possesses 
a portrait of his red-haired beauties, in gleaming 
peach-coloured costume, and Bordone has a more 
distinguished effect than Raima. He not only knows 


Ubc Contemporaries ot XTittan 379 

how to cause velvet and silk to shimmer as brilliantly 
as did his predecessor and renders the delicate shades of 
red hair and the soft gleam of powdered skin with equal 
appreciation, but also endows his women with such a 
commanding majesty, such a nobility of pose, and 
such queenly movements, that Palma's entire art seems 
trivial in comparison. For between him and Palma 
stands the giant figure of Titian, to whom Bordone 
owes his great style. 

The Bonifazii and Bassani play an important role 
in the history of genre-painting. The former treated 
religious subjects as scenes from the patrician life of 
Venice, the latter as scenes from peasant life. It is 
vain to search for religious sentiment in the works 
of the Bonifazii. Worldly splendour and enjoyment is 
the prevailing sentiment of all their works. Festal 
buildings rise, and richly dressed people come and go; 
and the twilight, which they especially affect, brings 
unity of colour into this gay medley. It is difficult 
to say whether Bonifazio Veronese ever thought of the 
Bible when he painted his Rich Man's Feast; for the 
painting simply represents the private life of the 
Venetian nobility. After his dinner, the nobleman 
sits in his garden with his wife and daughters, one 
playing the lute, the other dreaming. There is nothing 
great about his art, which is only dainty and neat. 
But as the painters in the sixteenth century, in their 
endeavour to attain a monumental effect, usually 
avoided genre subjects, the pictures of the Bonifazii 


38o /IDajestic an& Uitanfc 

are important as forerunners of the genre-painting of 
the following centuries. 

The Bassani received their inspiration from the peas- 
ant idyls in some of Titian's wood-cuts. They went 
into the country, drew huts, oxen, and waggons, and 
transferred these studies to biblical and legendary 
subjects, which they decorated with rich landscape 
scenery. The household furniture and domestic ani- 
mals of their paintings were of more importance to 
them than the biblical theme. Thus a certain rustic 
trend was introduced into Italian religious painting, 
and the animal-painting of the following century stands 
revealed in the background. 

The development of painting in Brescia runs parallel 
with the Venetian. In his dramatic actions and 
technical bravura Romanino greatly resembles the 
Venetian Pordenone. Moretto, one of the noblest 
painters whom Italy produced, gave his altar-pieces 
a grandiose and solemn character. A cinquecentist 
in the powerful simplicity of his painting, he neverthe- 
less preserved the solemn sincerity of the older time; 
and at the same time he strikes strangely modern 
accords of colour. In contrast to the Venetian's 
love of full and vibrating colour tones, Moretto attuned 
everything to a fine silver-grey. He felt himself most 
at home in painting the white cowls of his monks, 
which supply the leading note for the colour harmony 
of the whole. In nature also cool and grey-blue tones 
prevail; the water is white and the clouds gleam in 


^ 


Contemporatfes of xntian 381 

light grey. The evening red, with the Venetians a 
deep crimson, is with him a greyish or lemon colour. 
His chief altar-pieces, besides those at Brescia, are 
a fine panel at Berlin, St. Justina at Vienna, 
a Madonna at Frankfort and an Assumption of the 
Virgin in the Brera. Otherwise he is principally 
represented by portraits which are Venetian in their 
mighty outline, but almost northein in the intimate 
manner in which he depicts people in their accustomed 
surroundings. 

In this domain he was followed by his pupil Morone, 
who, at a later period, laboured at Bergamo, and 
whose Tailor is one of the most extraordinary examples 
of the sixteenth century portraiture. Nothing is con- 
spicuous or artificial in the pose; but a representative 
sublimity or monumental efi'ect is to such an extent 
the prevaihng note of the age, that a simple artisan 
is here transformed into a nobleman, and his portrait 
into a product of a mighty, historic style, 

Savoldo is the most interesting artist of the group. 
As he, like Melzi and Boltraffio, was descended from a 
noble house and practised art as an amateur, he could, 
like them, follow his personal inclinations to a greater 
extent than his professional colleagues. His preference 
was for landscape, by means of which he changed 
the traditional religious representations into studies 
of light and shade and Stimmungshilder. The great 
altar-piece painted by Titian in 1522 for Brescia, in 
which the Resurrection 0} Christ is represented as 


38;? ffbajcQtic an& Uttian 

taking place in the evening twilight, seems to have 
been the starting point of Savoldo's art, which prefers 
dreamy and mystic effects. In his picture of the Trans- 
figuration a mystic light radiating from the Son of 
God fills the air; the Bewailing of the Body of Christ 
takes place in a melancholy evening light; and the 
Adoration of the Shepherds gives an opportunity to 
depict the charm of a moonlight night. Even in his 
portraits he introduces light effects, especially the soft 
shimmer of the evening glow streaming in through the 
window and flooding the room and its occupants. As 
they were the principal problems for him, he took the 
further steps of projecting light effects upon simple 
figures of every-day life. The mysterious picture of 
a girl in the Berlin Museum is especially celebrated. 
With a brown silk mantle drawn over her head, she 
glides past with rapid observing glance; the evening 
sinks, and only a belated sunbeam falls upon her 
pale, delicate face. In pictures of this sort Savolo 
anticipated by decades the development of professional 
art. 

Sebastiano del Piombo, who was eight years younger 
than Titian, can only in his youthful works be considered 
a Venetian. His altar-piece of the church of San 
Giovanni Crisostomo belongs to the finest flowers of 
Venetian art. The figures of the women surrounding 
the throne of the saints are of a serious and solemn 
grandeur reminiscent of Feuerbach, He also had 
such a sense for deep glowing colours as had hardly 


GIOVANNI BATTISTA MORONE 



PORTRAIT OF A TAILOR 

National Gallery, London 


/IDtcbelanaelo 383 

another in Venice, But after he had become a resident 
of Rome, in response to an invitation of Agostino 
Chigi, the Venetian painter became a Roman. Even 
his female portraits show the change: the mighty 
heroic woman of the Uffizi gallery with the broad Ro- 
man bust usually called La Fornarina, and Dorotea of 
the Berlin Museum, glancing at the beholder like a Ven- 
us Victrix, dignified and unapproachable. At a later 
period the son of Byzantine Venice was only revealed 
in the fact that he, even in heathen Rome, painted 
passion scenes, representations of the Flagellation 
or Christ Bearing the Cross and the Entombment, but 
the style of these works is Roman: instead of Venetian 
colour, a gloomy, leaden grey; instead of repose, a 
powerful dramatic action. This is especially shown 
in his picture of the Saviour summoning with mighty 
gestures the herculean Lazarus from the grave. Michel- 
angelo, the Roman Titian, was the demigod before 
whom he admiringly bowed the knee. 

HID. /Ibicbclangelo 

Under Michelangelo's leadership the art of the 
cinquecento took its final step. Since the beginning 
of the century all detail had been increasingly elim- 
inated in favour of the grand style. If formerly as 
much as possible of the beautiful world had been 
depicted in paintings, now the development of monu- 
mental figurc-painting was accomplished. In this 

VOL. I.— 25 


384 /iDajestic an& XTitanic 

respect Michelangelo spoke the decisive word. While 
in the pictures of the Venetians landscape played an 
important part as an aid to sentiment, Michelangelo 
proclaimed that there was no other beauty except that 

"^^of the human form. Not a blade of grass occurs in 
his paintings, and when in the picture of the Creation 
in the Sistine Chapel it was necessary to indicate the 
origin of vegetable life, he made use of a sort of primeval 
fern. A piece of marble is the symbolic representation 
of a city, a tree of the garden of Paradise. Michel- 
angelo's only problem is the nude human body, the 
representation of which for him was the equivalent 
of art. 

For the comprehension of his paintings it is further 

J necessary to remember that Michelangelo was really 
a sculptor. One loves to think of him sitting brooding 
before the marble quarry of Pietra Santa, reflecting 
upon all the beings concealed in the cliff. Although 
his occupation with painting goes back to his earliest 
youth, he was in his element only when he held hammer 
and chisel in his hands. Painting had for him an 
indirect value as the necessary surface representation 
of plastic thoughts which he was not privileged to 
carry out in marble. While he was not permitted to 
complete many works as a sculptor, painting afforded 
a means of conjuring up a whole world of beings in 
stone. The onesideness with which he followed these 
paths from the beginning was terribly impressive. 
He was never charmed by colour or by the psychic 


^icbelanaelo 385 

content of a theme, but viewed the world as a sculptor 
alone, and is concerned only with the problem of form, 
even when it is not the expression of a given subject. 

The Holy Family in the Tribune of the Uffizi is the 
first thundering revelation of his abrupt personality. 
Former artists had depicted love and tenderness, 
manhood and cheerfulness in such v/orks and attempted 
to achieve the solution of a problem in composition. 
But Michelangelo was occupied with the problem only 
because Leonardo's cartoon of St. Anne had appeared. 
His chief interest was in those beings with gigantic 
limbs sprawling about the triangular composition. 
In the foreground sits a mighty woman, neither the 
humble Mary of a former day nor the queen of heaven 
of the cinquecenio, but a heroine with brazen bones, 
and bare arms and feet. Stretching her knees to the 
right and her arms to the left she reaches over her 
shoulder to receive the Child from Joseph, a grey- 
bearded athlete, who is seated behind her. The 
Holy Family has become a brood of Titans, and the old 
theme of maternal joy a conglomeration of powerful 
dramatic action. The colour is of metallic hardness, 
the landscape only indicated in so far as it is necessary 
as the ground upon which they sit. Where other* 
artists would have depicted trees, Michelangelo plants 
nude men with neither name nor purpose except that 
they are there. 

The cartoon of the Bathing Soldiers, drawn in 1 504, 
gave him for the first time an opportunity to make 


386 Majestic an& Zlitanlc 

the principal object what in the picture of the Uffizi 
had been relegated to the background — the nude. In- 
stead of a battle-piece with arms and cannon, which 
the Signoria had desired as a pendant to Leonardo's 
Batik of Anghiari, he represented the moment when 
an alarm summoned a crowd of bathing soldiers to 
battle. One attempts to climb the steep river bank, 
another bends over to help a comrade; a third, sup- 
ported upon his 'hand, swings himself up to the shore; 
yet another lies negligently on the ground; and a fifth 
endeavours to draw his hose over his nude body, 
while his comrade runs about looking for his clothing. 

A copious discourse might be delivered upon the 
content of the ceiling frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. 
After the Tuscan masters of the quattrocento had frescoed 
the walls with subjects of the Mosaic and Christian 
dispensation, contrasting the times sub lege and suh 
gratia, Michelangelo received the commission to recount 
upon the ceiling the period ante legem, from the story 
of the Creation to the Flood. To this he added the 
prophets, the sibyls, and furthermore the ancestors 
of Christ to prepare the way for His appearance. 
But such an account of the biblical content is quite 
inadequate. For Michelangelo there was nothing 
Christian or unchristian, neither sin nor forgiveness, 
neither guilt nor mercy; only human bodies and 
dramatic action. 

J In the three pictures from the life of Noah with which 
he began the work, the Florentine battle-piece is re- 


/IDicbelanGclo 3S7 

echoed. He claimed from the beginning the right of 
treating the theme in the nude. The scene of the 
Disgrace of Noah he rendered senseless by representi'ng 
not only the drunken patriarch but all the others nude. 
The Thank-offering of Noah he used as a pretext to 
assemble a group of nude men about an altar; and in 
the Flood the motive of the Bathing Soldiers is mag- 
nified into tremendous proportions. As there the 
enemy, here the water approaches. Men drag their 
wives away, and women gloomily brooding sit with 
their children upon the ground. One seeks to save 
his possessions, another to climb a tree, while a third, 
who endeavours to climb into a canoe, is pushed back 
by its inmates. Others are huddled together under 
a tented roof. Not a vestige of clothes or landscape 
appears. 

With a better sense of perspective he confines himself 
in the following pictures to a few colossal figures. 
With hands raised and head thrown back, God the 
Father storms through space : " Let there be light !" He 
spreads his arms, the sun and moon arise; He stretches 
them downwards, and one feels that life is coming 
upon the earth, although Michelangelo only paints the 
force 2^3 riot the efi"ect. In the fresco of the Creation 
Adam lies like a colossus of clay; his body in full view, 
his hips turned, the knee drawn up. At God's touch 
an electric shock pulsates through the giant body. 
While in the older art the Fall of Man consisted of a 
landscape and two standing figures, Michelangelo 


/ 


388 Majestic ant) tTitanic 

merely indicates paradise by a few leaves, and instead 
of reposeful figures presents contorted bodies. Eve, 
cowering, turns backward to receive the apple from 
the serpent, while the erect Adam reaches over his 
wife into the foliage of the tree. In colour also he 
becomes increasingly the sculptor. Although in the 
frescoes of Noah a few tints are still visible, in the later 
ones everything is softened to a dull grey. 

Surrounding these middle pictures are twelve single 
statues, which, by way of ecclesiastical justification, 
Michelangelo labelled with the names ascribed by 
Christian mythology to the prophets and to the sibyls. 
But how indifferent it is whethe: one is called Joel, an- 
other Jeremiah, or a third Jonah! What cares he for 
the Delphic, the Libyan and the Cumaean sibyls ! He 
is only concerned with the ecstatic convulsions of the 
gigantic bodies. Here one absorbed in deep thought 
supports his head on his hand; there a woman like a 
beautiful Medusa stares rigidly and wonderingly into 
the infinite; another prophet falls backward as if 
convulsed by a sudden revelation. And even if in this 
case the movement seems the expression of psychic 
action, purely physical motives actuate the other 
figures. A sibyl, wishing to procure a mighty book 
from a shelf, instead of rising reaches backward with 
both arms; another, in raising a giant folio, lying at her 
side upon her knee turns body and legs in opposite 
directions. 

In the architectural framing he felt himself released 





< ^ 

; 5 

o ^ 

H Co 

Pi '^ 

w -Si 

K 

^ -^ 

Q 
'o 

to 


fe, 


/IDicbelanaelo 389 

from all biblical fetters. Instead of the decoration of 
the earlier masters he gives nude bodies. Children, 
painted the colour of bronze or of wood, writhe in the 
midst of triangular surfaces, and further on, youths 
conceived as caryatids support the pillars of the ceilings 
and the bronze tablets serving as labels for the prophets 
and sibyls. Finally, to crown the whole, the Slaves, 
high above the pillars, between the prophets and the 
sibyls, sit facing each other in pairs, winding the 
bronze medallions about with garlands and draperies. 
It is the old motive of the putti with the fruit garlands; 
only that Michelangelo has made giants of the children 
and changed the delighful sport into a neck-breaking 
performance of balancing. Ten times the same prob- 
lem had to be solved, and always new motives of 
movement crowded upon him. Thirty years later 
he used the theme of the Last Judgment to hurl nude 
human bodies through the air in all conceivable 
movements, foreshortenings, and contortions. 

This is, indeed, an external description of the pictures, 
but it does not correspond with the real content of 
Michelangelo's art. As his God was neither the terrible 
Jehovah of the Old Testament nor the loving Father 
of Christianity, but Fate passing indifferently over 
the earth, so, in describing his work, one can properly 
speak neither of man nor of the nude. For his creations 
are not men; they have nothing in common with 
the creatures living upon our earth. In depicting 
the nude, he indeed adopted the heritage of Pollajuolo 


1 


1 


go 


/©ajestic ant) XTltanic 


and Signorelli; but he is not tempted by the animal 
beauty of the body, nor is this exaggerated action the 
expression of a given theme. He only unburdens 
the nightmare of his own soul, and what he created 
relates only the tortures of a lonely, martyred spirit. 

" ' T was of my own sad soul a picture true, 

And bore the stamp that marks my gloomy brow." 

As Titian's life was a great harmony, Michelango's 
was a mighty dissonance. An event even before his 
birth is significant. When his mother had borne 
him seven months under her heart, and was accom- 
panying her husband on horseback to his post in 
Chiusi, the animal stumbled; she fell and was dragged 
after it. This is a premonition that the life of this 
man would be a chain of catastrophes and mighty 
convulsions. Proud of the ancient blood of the counts 
of Canossa flowing, as he believed, in his veins, his 
father was not willing that his son should become 
an artist; and it was only by the son's immovable 
will that family resistance was conquered. Hardly 
was he apprenticed to Ghirlandajo when his relation 
to his teacher became one of enmity. Not long 
afterwards a further collision occurred. Torregiani, 
whom Michelangelo had irritated, broke his nose, a 
deformity which futher affected the formation of his 
character He who should in appearance also have 
been a priest of the beautiful was a homely, deformed 
man; in striking contrast to Leonardo, who moved 
about like a young god or an enchanting magician. 


/IDfcbelanoelo 391 

Michelangelo, on the other hand, was small, his head 
almost abnormally formed, his brow mighty, and his 
eye without lustre; his flattened nose gave an expression 
of slavish, Malayan ugliness. 

Thus in his youthful years he never learned what 
love meant. "If thou wishest to conquer me," in 
old age he addresses love, "give me back my features, 
from which nature has removed all beauty." Whenever 
in his sonnets he speaks of passion, it is always of pain 
and tears, of sadness and unrequited longing, never 
of the fulfilment of his wishes. But besides ugliness, 
quarrelsomeness of disposition was a gloomy present 
of nature to him. Sharp and ironical in his judgments, 
proud and irascible, he was not made to win friends. 
His judgment of Perugino was so severe that the latter 
accused him before a court; and in Bologna he quarrelled 
with good-souled Francia, to whose son he had observed 
that his father's living figures were better than those 
he painted. From their first meeting he was hostile 
to Leonardo, because even their external contrast 
aroused a feeling of bitterness within hini. He was 
never present when Florentine artists assembled. 
Sensitive and suspicious, irritable and discontented, 
he always believed himself surrounded by intrigues. 
Even in his youth, at the time of his flight from Florence, 
that dependence upon gloomy forebodings appeared 
which in later life so often determined his actions. 
Only by labour could he assuage his melancholy and 
bitterness. He worked by fits and starts, lying for 


/ 


392 /IDajcstic an& Uitanic 

a long time fallow and then tempestuously unburdening 
himself. It is related that he laboured so feverishly 
upon his David that he slept in his clothes just where 
he had fallen down in the evening, overcome by 
work. 

When he came to Rome a new convulsion im- 
mediately followed, for here two worlds collided. 
Michelangelo himself was, in the highest sense, of a 
tyrannical nature; and upon the papal throne sat a 
similar spirit, the passionate condottiere Julius, of whom 
it was said that he was accustomed to beat his cardi- 
nals at table. Like two hostile powers the two stood 
opposite each other. Michelangelo spoke to the pope 
with head covered, and treated him, according to 
Soderini's words, "as the king of France would not 
have dared to." Yet the pope tamed him, and led 
him back, after his flight to Florence, "with a halter 
about his neck." But not only with Julius did he 
collide; nothing that he did took place without a battle. 
In Carrara he quarrelled with the labourers who 
hewed the blocks for the monument of Julius, and with 
the shipowners entrusted with their transport he was 
embroiled to such an extent that they finally besieged 
him in his house. He was compelled only by force 
to undertake the ceiling frescoes of the Sistine 
Chapel. Bramante who had built the scaffolding, 
was accused of designs upon his life. The assistants, 
whom he had sent from Florence, he suddenly 
avoided; when they came to work they found the 


/IDicbelangelo 393 

chapel locked. Only because it was unbearable for 
him to be in company with others, he completed the 
giant work without assistance, "Overburdened with 
cares and bodily labour," thus he writes home, 
" I have not a friend in Rome, neither do I wish nor 
have use for any; I hardly fmd time to take nourish- 
ment. Not an ounce more can I bear than already 
rests upon my shoulders." When the work was com- 
pleted he speaks in none of his letters of satisfaction, 
but only complains, praising Bugiardini because he 
was always satisfied with his own work, while he him- 
self was not permitted to finish even one in accord- 
ance with his desire. 

Nevertheless, at a later period, he looked back 
upon the years which he had spent under the reign of 
Julius 11. as upon a golden age. When the wild 
choleric Julius was succeeded by the effeminate, 
sybaritic Leo X., the discord between Michelangelo 
and the world into which fate had thrown him grew 
continually greater. A joyful epicurean spirit pre- 
vailed at Rome. One reads of merry cardinals and 
beautiful women, of Chigi's villa and of the luxurious 
banquets at which golden plates that the pope had 
used were hurled into the Tiber. In the midst of this 
world of agreeable cavaliers, beside Raphael, who 
won all by his lovable character, stood the sarcastic, 
reticent Michelangelo, unbearable in demeanour, firm 
and immovable in his opinions; passing judgment 
even upon Raphael with unmerciful keenness. As the 


394 /IDajestic aub XTitanlc 

pope observed to Sebastiano, Michelangelo was ierrihile 
and filled people with fear. 

It thus came to pass that he was banished by a 
commission to build the facade of San Lorenzo at 
Florence, where he lived during the following years. 
Here he witnessed the destruction of Florentine 
freedom, and was in charge of the fortifications during 
the siege, only to flee at a decisive moment — another 
symptom of the conflict of will which drove his tor- 
mented spirit hither and thither. Of the works which 
he planned not one was executed; for his plans were 
too gigantic. Even in his youth he wished to trans- 
form a cliff near Carrara into a colossus, and he planned 
to make the tomb of Julius a forest of statues. As 
gigantic as were his plans, so small and poor did that 
which he was permitted to complete seem to him. 
There is always a dissonance between his mighty 
impulse to create and the impossibility of realising 
this impulse. The man who felt superhuman power 
in himself went through life with leaden weights upon 
his feet. 

The return to Rome did not change his life. Raphael 
and Leonardo were dead, and a new diminutive race 
had grown up. Commissions which in his letters 
were the subject of grim persiflage were assigned him. 
He withdrew more and more from society, becoming 
an "impregnable fortress," as contemporaries called 
him. He associated not with the living but with the 
dead, especially with Dante, whom he honoured as a 


/IDicbelanoelo 395 

mighty, misunderstood spirit. He suffered about him 
only people who did not become burdensome to his 
own thoughts; he had boors in his house and loved 
to speak with children. His repugnance to seeing 
others was so great that, when in his work upon the 
Last Judgment he had fallen from the scaffolding, 
the physician had to force his way through a window 
in order to attend him. Even his family was a burden 
to him. Without a home of his own, he had never- 
theless to care for his father, brothers, and nephews — 
all of them genuine types of a degenerate nobility — 
who carried all their troubles to him. The manner 
in which he assisted them was likewise a curious 
mixture of touching love and indignant anger. The 
man who met the mighty of the world with such 
abrupt harshness, but watched through the whole 
night at the sick-bed of his servant, would rise in wrath 
over the demands of his relatives and yet lead the most 
penurious life in order to save for them. 

A further anomaly should also be considered. 
However much writers have endeavoured to associate 
Michelangelo's sonnets with Platonism, the men 
to whom they were addressed, Tommaso Cavalieri, 
Luigi del Riccio, and Cecchino Bracci, were not Plato- 
nic ideals. When he wrote adoring poems to Cavalieri 
and drew the Abduction of Ganymede for him, he only 
revealed how a lonely man sought compensation 
for the love of women which was denied him. But 
even in this he did not get beyond torturing thoughts 


396 /iDajestic auD ITitanic 

and self-reproaches; for to his other burdens religious 
scruples were added. Memories of youth were awak- 
ened in him, of the days when he sat at the feet of 
Savonarola. As he had formerly stupefied his suffering 
by work, he now longed for peace of soul, for the heav- 
enly love which, "stretched upon the Cross holds out a 
hand to us." 

"1 sliould have plunged my spirit deep in God — 
But ah! through ail the years I lent an ear 
To every fable that the world holds dear, 
And where sin led, unthinking took the road." 

Angrily he realised at last the dissonance between the 
spirit within him and the bodily ills which tortured him. 
At the same time that he designed the cupola of St. 
Peter's, he also, in bitter mockery, made a drawing 
of himself as an old man moving about in one of the 
little frames used to teach children how to walk. 
He stands old and lonely "in a treacherous world of 
sorrows." 

Only by his life can Michelangelo's art be explained. 
Because Titian was in harmony with himself and the 
world, the same inner happiness, the same mighty 
repose pours from his character into his works. Michel- 
angelo is of the race of Tantalus. As in his life there 
was nothing lovable or joyful, so his art is neither 
joyful nor free, but fearful and oppressive. It was 
no accident that he gave to his statue of Night a mask 
with empty eyes and distorted features as a symbol 
of her dreams, that his first work was a drawing after 


^icbelanaelo 397 

Schongauer's St. Anthony Tortured hy Demons. In 
him also demons struggle, and his dreams were not 
beautiful but gloomy and terrible visions. 

A single time, in his Leda, he painted the ecstasy 
of love; but precisely this work, which in content 
resembles the ideals of Leonardo, shows the difference 
between them. Leda does not tremble with joy as in 
Sodoma's picture, but is rather the goddess of mis- 
fortune whose brood of swans brought ruin upon 
Troy and Greece. As in his sonnets he calls the 
ecstasy of love a cry of pain, so in his picture an 
erotic scene is changed into a tragedy of fate. His 
women inspire one with fear rather than love; their 
arms are of steel, and their mighty legs are formed 
like marble columns. If the theme does not require 
it, he avoids the female body altogether. As in his 
life women played no role, so among the twenty 
Slaves of the Sistine Chapel there is not a single 
woman. He loved only the beauty of the male body, 
so much so "that it gave low-minded people cause 
for thinking evil of him." The " eternal feminine " 
which Titian and the followers of Leonardo cele- 
brated is replaced in Michelangelo's art by the " eternal 
masculine." 

But he did not represent the living man. For as the 
great recluse passed through the world in communica- 
tion not with the living but with the geniuses of the 
past, so as an artist he seldom used living models; he 
preferred corpses, which powerlessly yielded to con- 


398 /iDajestic an& Uttanic 

tortion of the limbs which living bodies would resist. 
And as the man was the great scorner to whom the 
world could offer nothing, so the artist never repre- 
sented natural mankind, but conceived a superhuman 
race of giants. 

He often emphasises to the pope and his relations 
how he suffered in being torn from his world of ideas. 
So his creations are for the most part self-absorbed; 
they sleep or brood thoughtfully, and if anything 
disturbs their repose, they start as if absorbed in 
thought, fearfully turn their heads or raise their arms 
to ward ofT. Adam's gestures in the Expulsion 
from Paradise and the last line of the artist's sonnet 
to his reclining statue, the Night, 

" Pero non mi destar, deh! parla basso." 

are characteristic of the frame of mind of this lonely 
man. 

As he felt himself a giant in the midst of contemptible 
pigmies, so his creations are children of wrath, who 
would spring up and shatter a world. Moses, especially 
\ with his threatening, contracted brows and his untamed 
' muscular power, is the incarnation of the mighty 
passions and glowing wrath struggling in Michelangelo's 
soul. But he is not only a titan; burning like Almighty 
God to create a world, he is a fettered giant; a Pro- 
metheus, whose hands and feet are bound by iron 
clasps. To what extent he realised this is shown 


MICHELANGELO 



THE PROPHET JEREMIAH 

Fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Rome 


/IDicbelanoelo 399 

by the Slaves of the Louvre. Indeed, he creates only 
bodies of titanic power and yet fettered, as if they were 
hindered in their movements by some superior power. 
His people never move freely and easily like Titian's; 
their surroundings always seem too narrow for the 
free action of their limbs. Here the framing is a 
triangle in which they can only cower but not stand; 
there a gable is placed above them, which, if they 
arose, they would shatter. Within this space which 
so heavily oppresses them, they struggle and stretch 
in mighty action, twist their limbs, contort and wind 
the different parts of their bodies hither and thither; 
with gigantic effort they seek to rise, and yet are 
unable to do so. In contrast with the full, joyful 
power in Titian, there is here something compressed, 
tortured; the unavailing struggles of Prometheus 
bound. 

Even the conflict of the will so characteristic of 
Michelangelo's character recurs in the beings which 
he created. As he fortified Florence and yet fled at 
the critical moment; as in his poems be often uses 
the expression, "What shall I do ? My will ever 
hesitates undecided"; so in his creations conflicting 
forces seem to contend, as if the different parts of 
the body were not directed by the same mind. While 
with other artists the movements unconsciously 
follow the will and the body is at unison with itself 
and the soul, with him the will does not seem to dom- 
inate the body. The separate limbs pursue different 

VOL. I. — 26 


466 /lOajestic m\b titanic 

paths. Here the muscles of the arm are strained for 
mighty action, but the body still reclines in deepest 
lethargy. There the neck is stretched and distended, 
but the limbs know not wherefore, being mechanically 
thrown in different directions. Or again, a sudden 
determination quivers through the body, but the 
limbs repose in dull apathy. 

The Last Judgment of 1 541 contains his legacy. 
Every element of wrath and bitterness that had 
collected in his proud soul is here poured forth, in 
older paintings the saints were silently and solemnly 
collected about the Saviour; wailing, but submissive, 
the damned yielded to their fate, and in solemn circles 
the elect soared to heaven. Michelangelo knows only 
wrath and revenge as the characteristic of the divinity. 
Naked, like a Roman imperator, Christ appears; 
1 the martyrs press forward, the angels sweep past, 
and a thunderbolt from His hand seems to shatter the 
universe. But it does not strike the damned. As 
Hutten said of Julius II. that he stormed the gates of 
heaven when Peter forbade him entrance, so Michel- 
angelo cannot conceive of humility, slavish obedience 
and fear, or gentle suffering. Terrible as is his God with 
the mighty gesture, the athletes defy Him; they do 
not draw back, but press forward in ever thickening 
throngs. As they approach, their forms grow more 
powerful and their bodies are contorted into impossible 
muscular masses. These are no sinners receiving pun- 
ishment for past actions, but rebellious giants storm- 


Uriumpb of tbe ^formal 401 

ing heaven. The final judgment is transformed into 
a GOtierdammenmg. 

In the PauHne Chapel he spoke his last word. Harsh 
and shrill are the lines; here depicting a yawning void, 
there wild dramatic action. Peter, nailed head down- 
wards upon the cross, seeks by a superhuman move- 
ment of the neck to turn round. It is Michelangelo, 
the fettered Prometheus, raising himself up for the 
last time. 

For the Italian Renaissance he became the Fate 
which he himself had painted in the Sistine Chapel; 
for he deprived art of its joy in the simple and the 
ordinary, and of its pleasure in colour. After the 
artists had seen this world of daemons, everything 
earthly appeared insignificant. They also wished 
to create giants in whom the powers of the universe 
struggled and contended. They attempted to make 
his language a universal one; but the greater the num- 
ber of his followers, the more lonely the great mas- 
ter became. 

It). Zbc ^rlumpb of tbe formal 

Of the two painters who at that time represented 
classic art in Florence, Andrea del Sarto is more 
nearly related to modern sentiment. Although noble 
composition meant everything to so true a son of the 
cinquecento, he nevertheless preserved, within this 
scheme of composition, complete freedom and a certain 
nervous mobility. The attitude of his figures is soft 


402 /iDajestic auD Hitanic 

and tired, their movements are of gentle indiflference. 
In the softly bowed head of his angels the tender 
ecstasy which Leonardo gave such beings still survives; 
his female heads are also more nearly related to 
Leonardo's ideal of beauty than to the distinguished 
and majestic conception of the later cinquecento. 
Dark, passionate eyes, with blue rings bearing testimony 
to sleepless nights, look upon us with consuming 
glance. The cheeks are pale, and a loosened braid of 
dark hair, straying downward, increases the sleepy 
impression of his paintings. As if confirming Vasari's 
description of Lucrezia del Fede, the beautiful widow 
whom he married in 1 5 17, as the model of his Madonnas 
and the evil genius of his life, a certain perverse 
piquancy is expressed in these heads. As a colourist 
also he entered upon the heritage of Leonardo by 
imparting a very individual shade to the tender 
sjumato, by substituting a subdued tone attuned to 
a cool grey or delicate silver key for the warm 
tones of Leonardo. In line as in colour he reveals 
the same soft, tired, aristocratic beauty; his favourite 
colours being black and white, yellow, red, and 
pearl grey, in which fine colour scheme he diiTers 
from all other painters of his day. With them one 
hears, in so far as colour is not sacrificed to plastic 
impression, the full flooding tones of the organ; with 
Andrea the soft, sharp notes of the violin. It is 
significant that he was fond of painting frescoes in 
grey monochrome, for this style corresponded best 


zri'iumpb oX tbe formal 403 

with his refined, neurasthenic temperament. He is 
a painter for connoisseurs, and is most select in his 
taste; at one time morbidly interesting, at another 
attractive in his solemnity; and notwithstanding the 
majesty which the style of the cinquecento required, 
he was possessed of a worldly elegance belonging 
to the unique family of Filippino Lippi, Melzi and 
Boltraffio. 

If we understand clearly what attracts us in Andrea 
del Sarto, we also know why Fra Bartolommeo makes 
such a strange impression. In the former's paintings 
we find men who are majestic and yet have souls; but 
in the latter's the difficulty of reconciling the apotheosis 
of the body, which was the real aim of the art the 
sixteenth century, with psychic refinement, too 
evidently appears. He has reached the stage in 
which feeling no longer animates the mighty forms, 
and where majesty is converted into hollowness. 
The body, in the quattrocento the fragile casement of 
the soul, has become an imposing vessel without 
content. What a mighty change to occur in the 
course of a decade! Like Botticelli and Perugino, 
Fra Bartolommeo belonged to those who gathered 
about Savonarola, and lived in the very con- 
vent where one painted and the other preached. 
He was at the head of the atelier connected with the 
convent of San Marco, and in conjunction with his 
friend Albertinelli provided many Tuscan churches 
with altar-pieces. But in these works the mysticism 


404 /iDajestic anD Zlttanic 

of Fiesole as well as the tender soulfulness of Perugino 
is quite forgotten. For these older masters beauty 
of form was not an aim in itself, but only in so far as it 
was an expression of sentiment. Now, in the very 
cloisters of San Marco, the lay figure was invented by 
Bartolommeo. When his name is mentioned one 
thinks of apostles and prophets mighty in body but 
insignificant in soul, and recalls the words of Goethe: 
" By chilling idealisation and rigid dexterity these 
biblical subjects have been deprived of their simplicity 
and truth and torn away from the sympathetic heart. 
By majestically draped and trailing cloaks artists try 
to make us forget the empty nobility of the ecclesias- 
tical personages." 

Let us neverthelesss beware of regarding Fra Bar- 
tolommeo from a false point of view. If he does not 
paint like Perugino or Botticelli, the reason is only 
because his ideals are different; and the fifteenth 
century, in its psychic refinement, is more nearly 
related to the present day than the sixteenth. The 
jrate nevertheless remains one of the representative 
men of that great age to which the cult of form, nobility 
of movement, and the majesty of the body meant 
everything. His first picture, the Vision of St. Bernard 
in the Florentine Academy, has nothing of the quiet 
soulfulness of Perugino; but in place of this it announces 
in the sweeping draperies that trend towards solemnity, 
in which the greatness of the master lay. To this 
everything that might destroy the general effect must 


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Uriumpb of tbe ^Formal 405 

yield. No individual heads suit these draperies, for 
beauty must be of a "regular" type. No landscape 
can serve as a background for them; they can only 
stand in the midst of solemn, imposing architecture. 
This ensemble he creates with a firm hand. Mighty 
pilasters, roomy niches, form the frames of his 
scenes; amd he skilfully uses the steps of the throne 
to vary the composition. Sometimes he places the 
principal figure upon a pediment in order to attain 
rhythmic lines. A baldachin held by angels often 
forms the circular termination above. All his 
pictures sound in full rich tones like stanzas of 
Ariosto, and are cf the same rnythmic flow as a 
well composed piece of architecture. After he had 
seen the prophets of Michelangelo at Rome, he 
himself with his St. Mark attempted the titanic. 
It was due to the religious movement which, as a 
reflex of the German Reformation, passed over Italy 
about 1 520, that his last work, the Entombment of the 
Pitti Gallery, reveals psychic qualities which far 
transcend the level of the fifteenth century. 

It was Fra Bartolommeo's unlucky fate that his 
works, just because the scientific rules predominated 
in them, became at a later period a welcome find for 
those who attempted to create classical art according 
to the formula of the classicists. His figures are 
distasteful to us, because they have become the con- 
ventional types of the "great historic style." His 
service nevertheless remains this, that he gave an 


4o6 


/IDajestic an& Uttauic 


appropriate expression to the stately, pompous, and 
representative spirit of the cinquecento, and was the 
first to fix certain laws of composition, just as Uccello 
had a century earlier determined certain laws of 
perspective. 


End of Vohime I. 





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